Just a ‘look’ and she knows it! Women can read people's minds through eyes

Scientists at the University of Cambridge, UK revealed this using cognitive empathy called 'Reading Mind In The Eyes' and found that women on an average fared better than men. They also identified genetic variants in women that are linked to the same ability.

The results confirmed that women on average do score better on this test. But more importantly, the team found that our genes influence performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test.

Varun Warrier, who led the study, said “This is the largest ever study of this test of cognitive empathy in the world. This is also the first study to attempt to correlate performance on this test with variation in the human genome.”

“This is an important step forward for the field of social neuroscience and adds one more piece to the puzzle of what may cause variation in cognitive empathy.”

In particular, genetic variants on chromosome 3 in women are strongly associated with the ability to read the mind.

Professor Thomas Bourgeron, who also worked on the study, added: 'This new study demonstrates that empathy is partly genetic, but we should not lose sight of other important social factors such as early upbringing and postnatal experience.'