Short German Versions of Empathizing and Systemizing Self-Assessment Scales

Abstract

Short German-language versions of empathizing and systemizing self-assessment scales have been developed based on the questionnaires by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Richler, Bisarya, Gurunathan, & Wheelwright, S., 2003 ; Baron-Cohen, 2004 ). According to the E-S theory, empathizing is characterized by the drive to cognize emotional and cognitive mental states in others and to react to these in an appropriate manner. In contrast, systemizing circumscribes the interest in systems, which includes analyzing, constructing, predicting, and controlling it. The present study pursued two goals: First, to provide a psychometrically tested measure of the constructs in German language; second, to provide a short form of the scale to reduce participants’ work load. Study 1 (N = 206) used factor analyses to select a subset of the 80 items used in the Baron-Cohen et al. Study 2 (N = 201) demonstrated the internal consistency and stability of the new empathizing and systemizing scales with 13 items each. Study 3 (N = 122) revealed high retest reliabilities.