Male brain type women and female brain type men: Gender atypical cognitive profiles and their correlates

- Sex differences have been documented in occupations, interests, and abilities
- Empathizing-Systemizing theory attempts to explain cognitive sex differences
- Women on average empathize more, men on average systemize more
- We studied men and women with gender atypical cognitive profiles
- Gender atypical profiles predicted qualities commonly linked with the opposite sex

Gender differences exist in abilities, interests, and occupations. According to the Empathizing-Systemizing theory, the reason for all gender differences lies in the relative weights of two cognitive processes: women empathize more, which is useful in understanding people, while men systemize more, which means interpreting phenomena as rule-based systems. The terms “male and female brain type” refer to a heightened preference for one process over the other. We aimed to find out whether the gender atypical groups of male brain type women and female brain type men are more similar to the opposite sex than to their own in terms of a range of social, cognitive and personality variables. Female and male brain type groups were identified and compared within both genders in an online study (N = 2983). The results show there are female brain type men and male brain type women, who are characterized by qualities more often associated with the opposite sex, and who have not been reached by prior research. Thus, these findings demonstrate that cognitive type is a more powerful predictor of certain characteristics than is biological sex.