Empathy or science? Empathy explains physical science enrollment for men and women

Thomson, N.D.; Wurtzburg, S.; Centifanti, L.C.

doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2015.04.003

Empathy or science? Empathy explains physical science enrollment for men and women

Thomson, N.D.; Wurtzburg, S.; Centifanti, L.C.

Authors

N.D. Thomson

S. Wurtzburg

L.C. Centifanti

Abstract

Those in the physical sciences work to understand relationships among non-social entities and this may come at a cost to their understanding of social relationships. Alternatively, it could be that those in the physical sciences differ in how comfortable they feel in social situations. Prior research had been confined to looking at differences between particular subject majors (e.g., humanities) and physical sciences, leaving open the possibility that people choosing subjects like psychology or biology might differ on empathy. University students (N = 404) majoring in humanities, social science, life science, or physical science completed the empathy quotient (EQ). Confirmatory factor analysis showed three-factors of the EQ, and these were used in multinomial logistic regression. Empathy differences made a unique contribution to explaining subject major choice. We found that greater levels of empathy predicted membership in social and life sciences, while lower levels of empathy predicted physical sciences enrollment.

Citation

Thomson, N., Wurtzburg, S., & Centifanti, L. (2015). Empathy or science? Empathy explains physical science enrollment for men and women. Learning and Individual Differences, 40, 115-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.04.003

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 13, 2015
Publication Date	May 1, 2015
Deposit Date	May 15, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Apr 25, 2016
Journal	Learning and Individual Differences
Print ISSN	1041-6080
Publisher	Elsevier
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	40
Pages	115-120
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.04.003
Keywords	Empathy, College students, Gender, Subject major, Empathy quotient.

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Copyright Statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Learning and Individual Differences. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Learning and Individual Differences, 40, May 2015, 10.1016/j.lindif.2015.04.003.