Nature has equipped men and women with different bodies, but do we have different minds? The idea that ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ is a popular one and some psychologists believe there are innate differences between the sexes. But the topic is highly controversial.
What are women good at?
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen believes that, on average, women are better at empathising than men. So they have superior skills in both:
- cognitive empathy: the ability to ‘read’ the minds of others
- affective empathy: the ability to feel the appropriate emotion in response to others.
Baron-Cohen believes this ability to tune into other people’s ...
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