A recent study conducted across 57 countries with over 300,000 participants revealed that women are better than men at putting themselves in others' shoes and imagining what others think or feel. The research, referred to as the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test" by researchers at the University of Cambridge, measures "cognitive empathy." According to "Medical Express," women outperformed men across all ages and most countries.
Participants in the test were asked to choose the word that best describes a person in a photograph, understanding thoughts or feelings solely through images of the eye area. This eye test was first developed in 1997 by Sir Simon Baron-Cohen and his research team at Cambridge, revised in 2001, and has become a standard assessment for the theory of "cognitive empathy."
In the eye perception and understanding test, females recorded significantly higher average scores than males in 36 countries, with similar scores in 21 countries. Males did not surpass females in any country in the eye test. Dr. Carrie Allison, a co-researcher from the University of Cambridge, stated, "This study illustrates a substantial and consistent gender difference across countries, languages, and ages. It raises new questions for research into the social and biological factors that contribute to the observed gender differences in average cognitive empathy."
