Les Yeux Sont Le Miroir de L’Dme

Posted by Allen Baird, Partner on Jul 16, 2008 in communication, gender | 0 comments

I’ve raved before about the exciting work of Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Cambridge University. He’s written what I think is the best book on the subject of how the sexes perceive and interact with the world differently. The thrust of it is that men possess system-directed thinking while women enjoy empathy-directed thinking. There are different sorts of test to assess just how much ‘S-type’ or ‘E-type’ you are.

One interesting test he designed is called Reading the mind in the eyes. It’s included in his book but the online version is more fun. It lets you see how well you can judge the feelings and thoughts of people by just looking at a photograph of their eyes. Most people are actually pretty good at this… but women are slightly better than men.

Empathy is a great skill to have. It’s the cornerstone of all types of ‘social intelligence’ and well as altruism. Regardless of how skeptical you might be about Baron-Cohen’s central thesis, you have to admit that we leak far more information about our internal emotions form our eyes than you previously might have thought.

As the French never tire of repeating, “Les yeux sont le miroir de l’dme”.