Females score higher on empathy test

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Females, on average, are better than males at putting themselves in others' shoes and imagining what the other person is thinking or feeling, suggests a new study of over 300,000 people in 57 countries.

Researchers found that females, on average, score higher than males on the widely used 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test, which measures 'theory of mind' (also known as 'cognitive empathy'). This finding was observed across all ages and most countries.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , is the largest study of theory of mind to date.

Females, on average, are better than males at putting themselves in others' shoes and imagining what the other person is thinking or feeling, suggests a new study of over 300,000 people in 57 countries.

Researchers found that females, on average, score higher than males on the widely used 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test, which measures 'theory of mind' (also known as 'cognitive empathy'). This finding was observed across all ages and most countries.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is the largest study of theory of mind to date.

Although this study cannot discern the cause of this on-average sex difference, the authors discuss on the basis of prior research that this may be the result of both biological and social factors.


Studies of on-average sex differences say nothing about an individual's mind or aptitudes, since an individual may be typical or atypical for their sex. The Eyes Test reveals that many individuals struggle to read facial expressions, for a variety of reasons. Support should be available for those who seek it."

Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, senior author on the study


The researchers also showed that, in addition to sex, 'D-scores' (the difference between a person's drive to systemize and their drive to empathize) are a significant negative predictor of scores on the Eyes Test. This adds to an earlier study led by Greenberg in 2018 of over 650,000 participants, also published in PNAS, which found that D-scores accounted for 19 times more of the variance in autistic traits than did sex or indeed any other demographic variable. Thus, D-scores appear to play a more important role than sex in aspects of human cognition.