It might not surprise you, but a new study shows that women are generally more empathetic than men. In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Cambridge, Harvard and other institutions studied a specific type of empathy called cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is when a person can understand what someone else might be thinking or feeling and then use that knowledge to predict how the person will act or feel going forward. The researchers collected data from a cognitive empathy test called the “Eyes Test” from over 300,000 people in 57 countries. In 36 countries, women scored significantly higher in their cognitive empathy scores than men did. In no country did men outscore women. And the results showing women had more cognitive empathy held true across eight languages and for people of all ages.
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