Michael has explored the usefulness of emotions as oracles when testing. I tend to explain this with a physical component as well; if your eyebrows move, it is a bug. Furrowed in frustration is a sign that we need to explain something better or set their expectations in a different way. Oppositely, when they go up in surprise it can mean the same thing for different reasons.

In this podcast, Dr. Marco Iacoboni discusses ‘mirror neurons’ which allows us to empathize with people. The more neurons, the more empathetic. It so happens that one of the traits of people with autism is that they lack (or disfunction) of these neurons. (The first half of the podcast is the most interesting as it talks about the neurons and how they test for the presence of them. After that, it goes off about the election and a few other things which wasn’t nearly as interesting.)

My first thought when listening was whether we want people in the testing craft to be those with more, or less mirror neurons. On further thought though I think it wouldn’t make much difference as the interaction in a pure testing context is between tester and machine; so no empathy necessary. One place I can think it would be very important is if their role is to debrief testing sessions. In that case you want someone who can pick up the nuances of what people are actually telling you through their voice, body language and inflection.

Walking further out on the limb, I think a lack of empathy might also be valuable when logging bugs. If a developer is having a bad week, a highly empathetic tester might hold back on logging a bug as a result. A person with low empathy would log it anyways. If our primary objective as testers is to identify issues in the code then clearly the low empathy person is the one actually fulfilling the mission.

To link this back to the shaky ground I’m thinking on here.

There are a number of people who are successful in technology who have the minor form of autism called Asperger Syndrome. BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen comes to mind immediately, but I recall reading an article which posited that Bill Gates has a number of the traits of this as well. Does anyone know of someone who has been successful as a tester that has been (clinically) identified as having AS or a more severe case of Autism? Although I have been testing for over 10 years now I have only worked closely enough with about a dozen testers to be able to make any sort of guess about them (rightly or wrongly). In my very limited sample set, I don’t think I have.