What causes someone to develop the nerd personality? Biology is partially responsible for creating what Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen calls a "systemizing brain," or "S-brain"--a brain good at figuring out logical rules. The opposite is an empathic brain; E-brains are good at divining what people are feeling and people with E-brains develop sharper social skills. More men have S-brains than women, and more women have E-brains than men--though men and women both fall all over the spectrum.
People with autism, or its milder variant, Asperger's syndrome, are biologically disposed to have extreme S-brains. Nerds stand squarely on the S-brain side of the spectrum, but not necessarily enough to have Asperger's or autism. Some nerds have Asperger's but not all. Nerdiness and Asperger's aren't the same thing, but they have a lot in common.
"Nerd" is a vernacular label, not a scientific one, but it's usually earned by a love for activities that are logical rather than sensual or physical--math, biology or coding rather than cooking, ballet, or football. The leisure activities we associate with nerds--chess club, computer games, electronics projects--all depend on rational, systematic thinking, and tend not to involve emotionally nuanced conversation with other humans.
Nerds can learn social skills if they approach them with the same intellectual rigor they bring to calculus, says Lawrence Welkowitz, a psychologist at Keene State College. He's found that nerds can often master the subtleties of social interaction, compensating for disinclination with focus and practice. He runs a peer-mentoring program in which popular kids take nerds under their wing and give them tips on how to be cool. "Nerds focus on special interests and unusual topics, usually to the exclusion of maintaining relationships and emotional life."
Some nerds benefit just from watching daytime TV, says Daniel Rosenn, a psychiatrist in Wellesley, Massachusetts, who often works with MIT students with social issues. "I've taken 30-second segments of soap operas with the sound off and said, 'Let's look at the tape and figure out what the people are feeling.'"
By: Benjamin Nugent, author of American Nerd: The Story of My People
1 comment:
And then there's SEX-brain...
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