Empathizing, systemizing, and career choice in Brazil: Sex differences and individual variation among areas of study

Abstract

Individual variation in sexually dimorphic cognitive capacities for understanding people (empathizing) and things (systemizing) is related to career choice: individuals in careers dominated by women tend to exhibit higher empathy than individuals in male-dominated careers, who tend to score higher in systemizing. We tested this pattern in a Brazilian population. In Study I, using University public data (1980–2015), we found that exact sciences attracted significantly more males, whereas humanities and bio-sciences attracted more females throughout the 35-year period. Further, during the time period studied, there was a consistent growth of interest in both men and women in studying both exact sciences and humanities. In Study II, using the GLM analysis of an undergraduate sample of 248 men and 325 women, we replicated the sex differences in empathizing and systemizing, and found that, regardless of sex, individuals in humanities and bio-sciences score higher on empathizing and lower on systemizing than those in exact sciences. These results corroborate the sexually dimorphic pattern in career choice and in empathizing-systemizing, and show the importance of cognitive style as one of the factors related to university majors.