What does "lacking empathy' mean?

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PS: I hope it's clear I'm not saying all NTs are cruel and self-serving, like my sister. I just gave an extreme example of the difference between empathy and compassion, for major clarity.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that such manipulation is the result of empathy. Certainly, my own empathy can aid me in manipulation in the moment, but it also has the drawback of giving me a fairly powerful conscience.

That said, if I manage to manipulate people on the level of said sister of Greentea, I would have to quickly somatize the person's resulting emotions as well as my own. Only detachment can achieve that, but the effect it has on me isn't worth the effort most of the time.

Keep in mind that sociopaths are very manipulative, and seem to know just what the other person wants to hear. They are without empathy, but can quickly and intuitively gather information and utilize it efficiently, often by rote. This is what I would do to manipulate as well, though as I said, empathy can help pack a powerful punch -- at a cost. Whereas the sociopath generally feels no remorse for their actions for whatever reason (brain scans seem to indicate their mirror neurons don't react the same way as 'normal controls'), I would, and that's due to my empathy.

So, with all that considered, I would say that compassion is born of empathy, though not exclusively. I'm sure a person can learn compassion via the logical route, but for me, compassion is reactionary, even frustrating, due to my ability to 'feel,' emotionally and physically, what another person does. Really, you should see me in hospitals -- not pretty.

NOW HOLD ON HERE! I'm seeing a lot of tricky definitions of empathy that "NT's" would never use for themselves.

There's a description of early empathy in the book "The Scientist in the Crib": one of the authors was having a bad day and burst into tears at home after work. Her two year old ran and got bandages to bandage her up since that's what you do when someone's hurt. This was perfectly adequate behaviour to qualify as empathy in their view. Most of us have this. You don't have to know what the right thing is to do. You don't even know what the right word for what they're feeling is. There are only a few basic emotions, anyways: happy, sad, frightened, angry, surprised, anxious . . . ?

Empathy, the way non-autistic people and scientists describing non-autistic people define it, is something that normally appears by the second birthday, and often looks like how this little kid acted. We are accused of not having empathy because we often don't act like this, but I expect that we usually want to (same as everyone else) but our ability to interact is impaired. That has nothing to do with whether our ability to experience empathy is impaired or not.

There are people who truly lack empathy. They don't think about how other people feel. It doesn't even occur to them to. They're like eternal one-year-olds in that they flirt or flatter to get attention (and are sometimes very good at it), but they're only thinking of themselves and getting the attention they want. How other people feel isn't even on their radar. That is what lack of empathy looks like. Pseudoscientists like SBC would probably like them better because they know how to charm your socks off, and may be able to fool you if you're not paying attention. But if you're paying attention it becomes obvious that they don't really see you, except as an object that affects them.

Stop putting yourselves down with overly complicated definitions of empathy just because bad science says we don't have it. It's stuff like this that got me blogging in the first place.

I just thought I'd copy and paste this for the hell of it. I liked the part about psychopaths. I think I'd rather have aspergers... lol
And yes I get empathy confused also...


Some psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientists believe that not all humans have an ability to feel empathy or perceive the emotions of others. For instance, Autism and related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome are often (but not always) characterized by an apparent reduced ability to empathize with others. The interaction between empathy and autism spectrum disorders is a complex and ongoing field of research, and is discussed in detail below.

According to recent fMRI studies[8] the syndrome of alexithymia, a condition in which an individual is rendered incapable of recognising and articulating emotional arousal in self or others, is responsible for a severe lack of emotional empathy.[9] The lack of empathetic attunement inherent to alexithymic states may reduce quality[10] and satisfaction[11] of relationships.

According to Simon Baron-Cohen's ideas, an absence of empathy might also be related to an absence of theory of mind (i.e., the ability to model another's world view using either a theory-like analogy between oneself and others, or the ability to simulate pretend mental states and then apply the consequences of these simulations to others). Again with regard to autism, not all autistics fit this pattern, and the theory remains controversial, and does not differentiate between cognitive empathy and affective empathy, nor do autistic people lack compassion. Francesca Happe showed that autistic children who demonstrate a lack of theory of mind (cognitive empathy) lack theory of mind for self as well as for others [12].

In contrast, psychopaths are seemingly able to demonstrate the appearance of sensing the emotions of others with such a theory of mind, often demonstrating care and friendship in a convincing manner, and can use this ability to charm or manipulate, but they crucially lack the sympathy or compassion that empathy often leads to. However, it has been claimed that components of circuitry involved in empathy may also be dysfunctional in psychopathy (Tunstall N., Fahy T. and McGuire P. in: Guide to Neuroimaging in Psychiatry, Eds. Fu C et al, Martin Dunitz: London 2003). Empathy certainly does not guarantee benevolence. The same ability may underlie schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the pain of another entity) and sadism (being sexually gratified through the infliction of pain or humiliation on another person).[citation need

My mom always said that she would be in pain or upset about something, and that I'd stand around doing nothing or frozen. My cat ran outside (huge deal, indoor cat) and I just froze. It was a scary experience, I didn't know what to do. I just stood there, while my mom went after him, and brought him back inside. Then we found out that I have Asperger's, and she has been so much more understanding, we get along a million times better. I just found this website today, wish I found it earlier, especially last year when I found out... look forward to being here and meeting others.

Lacking empathy and being (for whatever reason) unable to display empathy are two very different things. People will usually take not displaying empathy as lacking empathy. In a situation where empathy would usually be displayed I tend to freeze up.

After my mom had gallbladder surgery she got very sick and nearly slipped into a coma and died. My sister kept crying at the hospital but I was very cool and calm. My sister angrily accused me of "being a robot" but the truth was I was completely cold inside. I wanted to cry and scream and throw up but the feelings inside couldn't quite make it to the outside.

If you feel empathy, but you can't display it, it'd be closer to Social Anxiety, not AS. AS lacks the feeling of another's emotional state by looking at them, which in turn equates to not displaying its indirect effects (care for the person's emotional state for example).

In Autism [and AS], it seems to improve as people age, which is [usually] due to intelligence, rather than actually feeling more empathy.

People can learn to recognize what an outward appearance looks like, and apply the "correct" words/actions, through evidence based experience. But, this still isn't feeling or having empathy.

Lacking empathy means that you don't sense what another person feels and why they feel that way. It does not mean that you don't care. The reason for our lack of empathy seems to be that we have fewer or no mirror neurons in our brains. Mirror neurons enable NT's to understand what another person feels by copying (mirrorring) the feeling in themselves.
Lacking empathy is not entirely a bad thing. Many people who do have empathy use it for bad rather than good: they find your most vulnerable spot and purposely hurt you as deeply as possible. There is no thing in this world more vile than that, I think, and we should be glad such meanness does not reside within us.

There is the opposite side of lacking empathy which is a "symptom" of asperger's. The unsung hero who reaches out to others is also very common in the spectrum. It's considered weird to hug a stranger if he/she is crying. I've done that plenty of times and it is not normal but, I think it is very strange to sit back and watch someone cry and not do anything. Like teachers or doctors who see a person having a melt down, they typically look away like they are uncomfortable. To me that is sociopath behavior.
Lacking empathy typically is referring to the inability to feel what another feels as a sympathetic emotional response.

Perfectly explained, Willem.

I think it's the other way around: innocent until proven guilty. If researchers want to prove we lack it, they need to make a better case than they have so far. I've seen at least one paper emphasizing that we do have it (as a group - not referring to individual people) that was published back in the 90s but I don't have the reference on hand. I will look it up at some point.

I assume you saw my thread on three different types of empathy a while back. That scale was created to measure empathy in just about anybody. It was not created to prove we don't have it, the way the EQ was (first item on agenda in EQ paper - to demonstrate we don't have it). Here's the link:

Three different types of empathy thread

And unlike the EQ, it does not measure ability to follow conversations as part of the measure of empathy. Ability to follow/participate in conversations and empathy are two different variables that should never be confounded.

I will look up that reference at some point, though it may be a while.

Look, they say all sorts of things about us that are true for some of us, so it can be hard to tell whether they're right or not sometimes. But empathy is not defined as what we don't have. By normal lay-person definitions, we cover the entire range same as everyone else.

Anemone,

I got:
Fantasy: 0
Perspective-taking: 0
Empathetic Concern: 4
Personal Distress: 0

They "proved" a long time ago that people with Autism "have no empathy" (most had "no empathy"), long before the EQ test by Cohen. I'll find some sources when I'm feeling less sedated/more interested. Since ASDs have broadened, they've turned it into "lacking empathy [to various amounts]", rather than "none at all" like in the past.