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Empathizers and systemizers process social information differently.
Tapani Riekki1, Annika M Svedholm-Häkkinen1, Marjaana Lindeman1
1a Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
Social Neuroscience
|August 23, 2017
Summary
Individuals high in empathizing show stronger emotional responses to social cues, while those high in systemizing rely more on cognitive processing. These differences in social information processing are evident in brain activity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- The empathizing-systemizing theory proposes distinct cognitive styles.
- Understanding differences in social information processing is crucial for psychology and neuroscience.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how empathizing and systemizing cognitive styles influence social information processing of emotional stimuli.
- To compare neural activation patterns during spontaneous and guided empathy tasks.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the empathizing-systemizing theory framework.
- Examined participants with high self-reported empathizing and systemizing traits.
- Measured brain activity using fMRI during spontaneous and guided emotional and cognitive empathy tasks involving negative photographs.
Main Results:
- Empathizers found emotional photographs more touching and understandable than systemizers.
- Systemizers showed greater activation in posterior cingulate cortex, left superior temporal gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus during spontaneous viewing.
- Empathizing correlated with amygdala activation, linked to higher empathy ratings, while systemizing was linked to weaker right inferior frontal gyrus/insula activation during emotional empathy tasks.
Conclusions:
- Empathizers and systemizers process social information differently, with empathizers exhibiting stronger automatic emotional reactions and systemizers engaging more cognitive processes.
- Neural differences observed during spontaneous viewing suggest distinct underlying mechanisms for empathy and systemizing.
- Task demands (spontaneous vs. guided) modulate the neural correlates of empathizing and systemizing.
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