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Simon Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron-Cohen Quotes

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Famous Simon Baron-Cohen Quotes

“Against this catalog of social difficulties, we must keep in mind that AS involves a different kind of intelligence. The strong drive to systemize means that the person with AS becomes a specialist in something, or even in everything they delve into. One man with AS in Denmark who I met put it this way: “You people [without AS] are generalists, content to know a little bit about a lot of subjects. We people [with AS] are specialists. Once we start to explore a subject, we do not leave it until we have gathered as much information as we can.” In effect, the systemizing drive in AS is often a drive to identify the underlying structure in the world.”

EmpathyAutismPsychiatryAspergers SyndromeSystemizing
Book:The Essential Difference: Male And Female Brains And The Truth About Autism
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“Systemizing and empathizing are wholly different kinds of processes. You use one process—empathizing—for making sense of an individual’s behavior, and you use the other—systemizing—for predicting almost everything else. To systemize you need detachment in order to monitor information and track which factors cause information to vary. To empathize you need some degree of attachment in order to recognize that you are interacting with a person, not an object, but a person with feelings, and whose feelings affect your own.”

EmpathyAutismEvolutionary PsychologySex DifferencesMental Modules
Book:The Essential Difference: Male And Female Brains And The Truth About Autism
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“Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded focus of attention and instead adopt a double-minded foucus of attention. When our attention lapses into single focus, empathy has been turned off. When we shift our attention to dual focus empathy has been turned on. Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to there thought or feelings with an approriate emotion. Empathy makes the other person feel valued, enabling them to feel that their thoughts and feelings have been heard.”

ThinkingFeelsPersonsHas BeensFeelingsAbilityEmotionAttentionFocusHeardEmpathyEnablingThoughts And FeelingsLapsesTurned OffDouble Minded
Author:Simon Baron-Cohen
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“Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with a neighbor.”

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Book:The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty
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