Empathizing and systemizing in adults with and without autism spectrum conditions: cross-cultural stability.

Wakabayashi et al. (2007) gave the Empathy Quotient and Systemizing Quotient to adults with and without autism in Japan and England.

They wanted to know if the empathy-low, systemizing-high pattern seen in Western autistic adults would show up in a very different culture.

The pattern held in both countries. Autistic adults scored lower on empathy and higher on systemizing than non-autistic adults.

The same sex differences also appeared: women scored higher on empathy, men on systemizing.

The study repeats the core finding of Baron-Cohen et al. (2004), the team that built the EQ scale. Simon et al. first showed the empathy gap; Akio et al. show it is not just a Western quirk.

Auyeung et al. (2012) later stretched the same tools downward to teens and got the same profile, showing the pattern is stable across age groups.

Rogers et al. (2007) seems to disagree. They found autistic adults had low cognitive empathy but normal or even high emotional empathy. The gap is smaller than the EQ total score suggests, because the EQ mixes both kinds of empathy into one number.

If you assess autistic adults, expect lower EQ scores almost anywhere in the world. Yet remember the EQ is a blunt ruler: low total score does not mean the person never feels for others. When empathy matters for treatment planning, dig deeper. Ask how they show care, instead of trusting one number.