Listening to other people

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Hi SocOfAutism

Quote: "…1) There are different understandings of "empathy." The kind of empathy that has been used on tests, for which autistic people don't do as well on, is more of a cultural empathy. A minority culture has trouble putting themselves in the place of the majority culture. A black person probably can't imagine what it's like to be white, for example, and a woman probably can't imagine what it's like to be a man. I also don't think it really goes the other way, but it appears to be worse when a minority is trying to empathize with the majority. In my own personal opinion, it's probably normal for minorities to pretend or try to empathize with a majority, but it would be unhealthy and weird if they really did. There was a Dave Chappelle skit once where Dave was an old, blind black man, who THOUGHT he was an old, racist white man, because no one had ever told him any different. In the skit, Dave was saying terrible, racist things about himself and didn't realize it. It was unnatural and strange, which was the point of the skit."

That skit sounds funny. As for majority versus minority cultures, wouldn’t the empathy difficulty go both ways? Especially if I’ve rarely or never met someone from a minority culture, how can I predict what they might think and feel? One way to bridge the gaps between cultures is through shared experiences. Another is to consider someone’s experiences in context when listening to them. What do you think?

The buying/selling experience from the beginning of the thread isn’t exactly cultural, but there may be context there as to why the items or the sales matter. If I don’t understand the context, and in addition, someone isn’t directly expressing their feelings in words or tone of voice, then I don’t feel anything with them, no matter what culture they’re from. I’m blind, so I don’t see body language or facial expressions.

Quote: "Many people think they are experiencing empathy, when in fact they may be experiencing sympathy. Let's say that two people see a homeless man on a cold night. One person feels bad and gives the man money. The other person thinks about how thrilling it must be to be free of life's responsibilities, and walks on without helping. What the second person feels is closer to empathy. The first person is experiencing sympathy, which in this case, is kinder than empathy."

Interesting example. Not sure I would’ve thought of the freedom from responsibility quite that way. If the homeless person was actually feeling that, then yeah, that’d be empathy. I think you’re right though that usually, people would feel either sympathy or nothing at all if they just walk by.

In your view, if you sense that someone is feeling a certain way without understanding it, is that sympathy or is that part of empathy?

I have this problem with my best friend all the time. She talks about her problems, and I just nod and say, "Yeah..." every so often, but it's hard for me to pay attention and listen to her. Then she'll bring up what she talked about later, and I'll have to pretend I remember the conversation. I'm just not interested, though.

I apologize for not responding earlier. I'm very interested in this topic. I guess I missed the notification in my email.

Okay so for the majority/minority culture part: Keep in mind that I have found ONLY ONE thing written directly relating autistic empathy to culture. I can find it for you if you like. It was a mention in ONE academic article. By...Gernsbacher et al I believe, but I'd have to look it up. The rest is just my own understanding. A majority culture is oppressing the minority. It doesn't matter if they aren't meaning to and aren't actively participating in that oppression. To go back to the Dave Chappelle analogy with white and black people: the idea of "white privilege" is that anywhere you go, Western civilization is set up FOR white people, to favor whites over blacks. So even if you are a white that disagrees with this system, you still benefit from it. But you are not experiencing the oppression yourself because you are part of the majority. I'm not saying this is definitely correct- this is just the idea behind this social theory. To be a black person, even if you are rich, well-educated, powerful, etc, you are still a part of this minority population and so still experience oppression, if only in a removed way. So therefore, it should be more difficult for a person who IS BEING OPPRESSED to empathize with an oppressor than the other way around.

As to the empathy/sympathy thing- I also see problems with this idea of empathy. I'm not sure empathy even fully exists. For an idea to be symbolically accurate, we all have to have the exact same idea in mind when we hear the word. Why is a tree a tree? We all agree it is a tree. When we see, smell, feel, etc trees we all agree on the definition. This is not so with the word "empathy." The experience of empathy that Deanna Troi on Star Trek the Next Generation has does not exist for real people. Not that I have found, anyway. No one is able to plug in to another person and definitively feel exactly what they feel. We can make observations about them and then imagine what they feel, then that in turn may create a mirror feeling in ourselves, that we think is what the other person is feeling. But we have no idea if it's the same thing. The other person may say it is, but they could be lying, or have a different understanding than we have. We can't know.

Being able to sense that another person is feeling a certain way and not understanding it...I'm not sure that would be either one. You didn't provide what kind of feeling that elicits in yourself. If there is no feeling, that you are simply making an observation- there is no sympathy OR empathy. If it elicits confusion, wanting to help, concern, etc, I would think that that would be sympathy. But if you pick up, say, a general sense of what is going on with them and then you start to feel that same general feeling, I would call that empathy. Like, let's say that they seem to be nervous and you pick up on that and start feeling nervous yourself. If they were nervous and it irritated you and you wanted to help them so they would stop irritating you, that would be sympathy. Does that make sense?

Again, I think the problem is that the word "empathy" is tossed around too casually and perhaps should be used rarely or not at all.

Thanks for another thoughtful reply, SocOfAutism. It's certainly not a race.

I think I understand now how someone from a minority culture would have a harder time empathizing with the majority now, in the context of some privilege or oppression. Here's a privilege example, someone I know was very upset about the process of getting gas for her car. I agreed that yes, it sucks. I also asked her if she also liked having her car though and being able to drive. I was trying to shift the conversation while still validating that getting gas isn't any fun, but it didn't work out that way. The problem was that I couldn't empathize with her when all I could think about was all the long bus rides I have to take. It doesn't make her problem any less, just harder to listen to somehow.

Re: empathy, yes, I agree that it's one of those abstract terms that people don't always use the same way. Maybe "sense" is better for observation of someone's feelings without understanding. Maybe "understand" is better for the process of active listening and getting to know why and how someone feels. That leaves "empathize" only for times when I feel the way someone else feels in the moment. It's interesting that my friends and I don't use the word that often anyway. Phrases are either, I feel you, I got you, or wow, I'm sorry! Maybe I could also say whether I feel for them or with them.