{"doi":"10.18260/1-2--33420","title":"The Role of Empathy in Choosing Majors","abstract":"In this research, the role empathy plays in women's choice of major is investigated with particular emphasis on engineering disciplines. We began by formulating a survey instrument that measured the level of empathy of the survey participant, the perceived level of empathy of various academic disciplines, the likelihood of majoring in a discipline, and the perception of empathy among the faculty and fellow students within their current major, along with demographic information. To measure the level of empathy of an individual, a modified form of the Empathizing/Systematizing Quotient (EQ-SQ) developed by Simon Baron-Cohen was used. The survey produced 517 valid responses. Of those responses, 46% were female. In addition, 257 were STEM majors with 231 of those being engineering majors. Of the engineering majors, 69 were female. Results from this survey indicate that 1) women are more empathetic than men, 2) students in engineering and other STEM majors are less empathetic than those in non-STEM majors, 3) engineering disciplines are perceived as less empathetic than other majors, and 4) empathy is negatively correlated with choosing engineering as a major.","journal":null,"year":2020,"id":122458,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9518,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":517725,"name":"Amy L. de Jongh Curry","orcid":"0000-0002-6445-2976","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":564139,"name":"Carmen Astorne‐Figari","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563665,"name":"Russell Deaton","orcid":"0000-0001-6760-4421","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563666,"name":"Wesam Salem","orcid":"0000-0002-5557-9123","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563667,"name":"Yonghong Jade Xu","orcid":"0000-0001-8481-1051","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":564140,"name":"Shelby G. Roberts","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563664,"name":"Eddie L. Jacobs","orcid":"0000-0002-6304-8381","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":11,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:51.076430Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}