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Russell Collins: Why Men Just Don’t Understand
Sometime during the 1990s in Parma, Italy, a man reached for a banana (or possibly a peanut — history has lost the exact detail), and a discovery was made about human emotions that some have compared to the discovery of DNA in biology or the theory of relativity in physics.
The man was Vittorio Gallese, a member of a team trying to learn about something rather ordinary: how a monkey’s brain generates the movement to grasp a piece of fruit.
Gallese and his team wired a computer directly into the brain of a macaque. When Gallese absent-mindedly reached for a snack himself one day, he noticed something remarkable on his computer screen: It was as if the computer was wired not to the monkey’s brain, but to his own! Gallese knew what his screen would look like when the monkey picked up an object, but it was Gallese who was reaching for the food — while the monkey’s brain was experiencing the movement. He glanced from the screen to the monkey, who sat immobile, observing him attentively.
Although it’s still controversial, many scientists now believe that Gallese tapped into nothing less than the physical source of empathy in the brain. They believe that scattered among the cells of our brains are specialized cells that “mirror” the actions of others, helping us understand their actions by simulating the experience in ourselves.
The macaque that was watching Gallese grasp the fruit was using its own feelings and bodily experience to understand what Gallese was up to. Similarly, through our own neural systems, we “feel” the intentions and emotions of others as we observe them. Mirror neurons allow us to walk in each other’s shoes — to let me more fully understand what it’s like to be you.
In research done since Gallese’s discovery, it has been found that women have more active mirror neuron systems than men. That provides an explanation for one of the most common sources of misunderstandings in couples — one that often mystifies the couples and frustrates a therapist’s efforts to bring them together.
It’s based in their neurological differences. “We can argue about anything,” my client, Jill, said angrily one day in my office. “An opinion about a movie or restaurant. A comment about a friend. The color of the sky. Anything! It’s very sad.” Her husband corrected her: “It’s not sad at all. People can disagree. Variety is the spice of life.”
Jill and Bill are stuck in conflict based in their fundamentally different ways of experiencing and understanding the world, said Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. Baron-Cohen, (besides being the cousin of Sacha Baron Cohen of Bruno fame) is the author of The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth about Autism.
In researching autism, Baron-Cohen has studied the responses of men’s and women’s brains and established two cognitive styles he calls “male” and “female.” The female, or E-type brain, makes sense of the world through empathizing, while the male, or S-type brain, works by systematizing.
“Systemizing is the drive to analyze, explore and construct a system,” Baron-Cohen said. “The systemizer intuitively figures out how things work, or extracts the underlying rules that govern the behavior of a system.” Empathizing, on the other hand, “is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion.”
Electroencephalography studies demonstrate that women’s brains often demonstrate higher levels of activity in the mirror neuronal system connected with empathy. Subjects who test high for empathy, though, often test lower on systematizing abilities. They are naturally more attuned to the moods and emotions of others, and less driven to seek rational answers. S-type brain subjects (Baron-Cohen calls autism “the extreme male brain”) exhibit inferior capacities for empathy, but superior drive and capability for systemizing.
These two cognitive styles seem balanced on a teeter-totter — high levels of one go with low levels of the other. Baron-Cohen speculates that the brain mechanisms responsible for empathizing — like mirror neurons — and those that promote systematizing may crowd each other out in a quest to dominate. “They might compete in the brain for space; that would be a very simple way that you could end up with that result,” he said.
Baron-Cohen is careful to avoid the “Men Are from Mars” kind of thinking that pits men against women based on their emotional styles. In fact, while men are statistically more likely to have an S brain than an E brain, both men and women can fall anywhere on the continuum from S to E. My own experience with couples leads me to think that, regardless of gender, S-type and E-type brains tend to migrate toward each other in love and marriage — with misunderstandings proliferating as a result.
Not surprisingly, Jill is the empathizer, and Bill is the systematizer. That is how it often works. When disagreements arise, Bill tries to boil them down to their logical elements in order to resolve the problem. Jill, on the other hand, tries to grasp their emotional significance. As a result, Bill is genuinely nonplussed by Jill’s inability or unwillingness to listen to logic. He uses a rational analysis to address and defuse Jill’s anger at him, but it doesn’t work. Jill is just hurt by Bill’s inability to grasp and respond to her feelings.
“So it’s hopeless, then. It just is what it is, based on our brains?” Jill asked me, when I laid out the concept. Just the opposite.
Understanding the hard-wired neurological basis for different cognitive styles can be the key that opens the door toward a new level of communication. Of course, deep, long-standing confusion rooted in differences in the brain can require a therapist’s help to unravel, but less-entrenched disagreements can yield simple new ways of approaching them.
» For the E-type brain. Use your empathy to feel the powerful need of the S brain to conquer the problem through analysis. Then imagine the hurt, frustration and hopelessness that must follow when his most basic tools for navigating the world prove useless in relating to you. The loneliness and helplessness of your partner as he tries to connect are no different than your own.
» For the S brain. Set aside your logic and your defensiveness as well as you can, putting yourself in her shoes for a moment. Imagine that you’ve opened yourself up to someone, and they seem cold and indifferent in return. Now, as best as you can, listen with your heart to the hurt and frustration your partner feels as she tries to connect through empathy and intuition, but winds up feeling shut out, helpless and lonely, just like you.
Every unhappy couple is unhappy in their own way, as Tolstoy famously observed (more or less). But there are common patterns that cause couples to misunderstand each other. Recognizing those patterns in your own relationship can begin to unblock the channels of communication. E brains misconnecting with S brains is one of the most common of these patterns. A little understanding on both sides can go a long way.
— Russell Collins is a Santa Barbara psychotherapist and divorce mediator. Click here for more information.
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» on 07.16.09 @ 09:29 AM
I like your stuff and have read some great articles. But please be more aware and don’t refer to heterosexual partners simply as all “couples”. There are a variety of gender variations when it comes to “couples”. You make yourself sound very old school and conservative. But then again, you just might be.
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» on 07.19.09 @ 08:41 AM
I agree with “friend”, and there’s an even more serious problem with this piece, when Collins writes “it has been found that women have more active mirror neuron systems than men”—that is only true if every single woman has a more active mirror neuron system than every single man, which surely isn’t the case. (Similar problems exist with statements like “Asians have higher IQs than whites”.) The reality, which is very different and has very different implications, is that the *average* activity of the mirror neuron system is higher for women *as a group* than men *as a group*. This tells one nothing about any individual man or woman, and it doesn’t even say anything useful statistically—for that one needs to compare the entire bell curves for mirror neuron activity systems for men and women—they could be slightly different or massively different.
Collins is more careful later, with accurate statements like “In fact, while men are statistically more likely to have an S brain than an E brain, both men and women can fall anywhere on the continuum from S to E”, but many people will casually peruse the article and come away with the impression that “women are more empathic than men”.
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» on 07.20.09 @ 07:07 PM
Marcel: While Collins could have phrased it more accurately, you yourself acknowledged that he got it right by the end of the piece.
You across as someone who loves the sound of his/her own voice. And a tad smug as well.
Friend: Collin’s piece was SPECIFICALLY devoted to noting the difference in brain functions of the SEPARATE GENDERS. And yes, he acknowledges that BOTH genders can be found along the continuum between “E” types and “S” types but that the brains do indeed tend to work differently.
Please - save your PC nonsense for a more deserving target.
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