Can Aspies develop empathy?

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I wish I could find some friends who were equally tolerant.

I watched the video you linked to, and while I respect that not all people share the same type of sense of humour, personally I find it utterly disgusting that somebody should do a stand-up routine about somebody's death. In my opinion, it's horribly disrespectful to get people to laugh about the events surrounding somebody's death. If I were Prince Harry or Prince William I would be absolutely enraged that somebody was using the events surrounding my mother's death to make an audience laugh.

I understand and fully appreciate that the comedian is not poking fun at Lady Diana herself. He is poking fun at the public reaction to her death. Nonetheless, despite that important distinction, I still find it a highly disrespectful and disgusting form of humour. Most stand-up comedians seem to have no boundaries and nothing is sacred. They will milk ANY topic and use it for comedy, no matter how devastating or shocking the topic is. I don't like that. I personally find it disgusting. There is no shortage of non-offensive things that they could be joking about instead. I think that they just choose to joke about controversial things for shock effect, because they are trying to get attention and stand out.

I have ALOT of empathy----I hurt TERRIBLY when someone else hurts----it's just that I can only handle, so much; I have a tendency to "wear" someone else's pain, really easily.

BTW, I cried for a WEEK, when Princess Diana died----same with Elvis. With Robin Williams, I was weepy / sad / bummed / you name it. So incredibly sad, all.....

I'm not convinced that no one has empathy, the same as I don't think people can pick or choose whether they have it or not. The same as time can't be measured accurately, a person can't be timed on complete empathetic senses.

If you have poor awareness of the term, and rely heavily on others to act as your shield, then it soon becomes blatant,
you're going to stand out looking like you are bullying someone into acting out your feelings for you because no one else will.
Most people won't be bullied though, into thinking they must act like that for someone, because they have a disorder of some kind.
I've been brought up in a very stereotypical moral class sense, but I don't let society dictate the rules for me, so I've acted out my emotions and let others bounce back unpardoned but you don't get off lightly however severe your vulnerability and vocal responses seem. All I know, I was more there for my friends than they were there for me.
If you manage to get away unscathed by hurting someone's feelings by not belittling them then you would be wrong in thinking no one will remember I've done that, because as humans we do.

The only disease is not being able to say what you are for fear of failure or worse. Seeing as I've also learnt that from a young age, I'd say my feelings become attached to whatever fieldset my mind is channelled to. Some people need a stage to feel secure, others like me don't.

With the passing of Diana, some twenty years ago, I knew something serious had occured, that a Royal had died, but I felt more sorry for my elders at the time, as they were used to seeing her, and my mother actually came within feet of her on one of her more untimed stop exchanges.
I remember the look on William's face and I felt sorrow on the day of the funeral, not when she died as I was under 10 and didn't know much about her. However , I felt the outpouring of emotion of people in the crowd outside Buckingham Palace, and more so when Elton John played Candle in the Wind.
I did well up after that. I think it showed the flashbacks of her life whilst he was playing piano and finished when the candle was still aflame.

Yay, it's not just me! You're never alone on Wrong Planet lol .

Yeah, the thing I resent is that they double down on that exaggerated/illogical emotion and make out that there's something wrong with me. How's that for ironic; my parents who generally try to have empathy for how different I feel can make me feel ashamed and freakish for not feeling empathy for a stranger . I think these sorts of disagreements in what should and shouldn't elicit empathy are partly responsible for the myth that NDs are devoid of empathy. Ah well, I've built it into my mask now lol, I know to sigh and look sad in the right places .

Whether or not, Aspies have empathy is not the real question here. It's a matter of expressing it that the real question here. Remember, Not only are Aspies not able to read non verbal communications. But we also don't express it as well. non verbal communications is a "2-way" thing. There is a reason why NT's think we have no empathy, It's not that we really don't. It's that we can't "tell" them(or "show" them for that matter.) that we do.

I would suppose that it's not so much that we lack empathy but rather that we might at times experience emotional detachment . This numbing of the emotions is a defense mechanism in which our emotions become numbed in order for our mind to cope with and recover from trauma . http://blogs.psychcentral.com/emotionally-sensitive/2012/05/the-agony-of-being-emotionally-overwhelmed/

Not crying when Princess Diana died does not mean you lack empathy.

I was only 7 when she died so it didn't upset me too much, although I remember noticing how upset my mum was, which did make me feel sad.

I remember when I heard Diana died, I thought "Who's Princess Diana?" and then I heard more about her and it didn't really bother me that she died. She was just another person in the world who died and people die all the time. I was 12. I didn't even know her and I had never even heard of her until she died.

it shook me when Diana died, but when saint Teresa died I felt she had lived a full life and it was time for her to rest.

i never did.
i can not feel what is going on in other people's minds. i never could.
i know other people are as alive and as real as me, so i do have hope that they have a good life, but beyond that, i never felt anything in concert with anyone else.

Nobody can. That's the rub. Because neurotypical people objectify reality in a way that we can't (and for which I am personally grateful ) Most people 'assume' that they feel and understand the minds of others, but... do they?
Of course not. It's not possible. It's an existential conundrum. Of course we can infer these things, but that's really about it.

For myself, I have never had an issue with lack of empathy; if anything I probably feel TOO MUCH empathy.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another person's shoes or to recognize what another person is feeling based on cues. It is heavily tied into affectionate empathy which can vary wildly depending on the individual. Some are stone cold while others have a basic ability to respond. Research from Simon Baron-Cohen shoes that affectionate empathy is tied heavily into cognitive empathy and often we mistake personal distress at another person's suffering for a drive to respond. Empathy is not despair or personal distress at seeing hardship or pain! If you see a person standing in front of you, can you tell me what they are feeling? Do you feel a need to hug or console them not to make yourself feel better or to mitigate your discomfort but for THEIR SAKE?

Sympathy however is not diminished in most aspergers, only some of the most severe cases of autism may (not always) leave a person unconnected from the rest of the social world and be unable to feel it since they do not use the part of the brain to recognize humans, rather objects (this is for SEVERE cases, like banging a head against a wall severe).

We do have a conscience unlike psychopaths, a psychopath is aware of a person's feelings but they simply don't care while we often cannot figure out or have trouble feeling another person's state of mind yet we do not engage in deliberately harmful behavior, at worst we just infuriate others and at best we have a strong moral code we follow, sometimes even stronger than with neurotypicals.

There is nothing wrong with admitting to wanting more empathy, I wish to be both a person who can read others without having to ask and to be able to connect with others and gain pleasure therefrom; I also want to be able to be James Bond. I don't want to be some coder behind I computer, I wanna be James Bond!

I have hopes for gene therapy in the future for other autistics, that way we can pick and choose what we want to edit, we can have all the strengths of a neurotypical and autistic without the weaknesses! (Although some of these so called neurotypical weaknesses serve a vital evolutionary purpose and are mutually exclusive with autistic trains, one may not be focused on detail nor be able to see the bigger picture unless the discover more mutations).

Neurotypicals are not illogical or irrational any more than autistics, they just lie in different areas and the world is not meant to be comepletely logical or rational, a touch of irrationality is what allows us to survive and without it would only lead to madness in seeing no order. This is getting frustating on this forum now, stop acting as if you all are special snowflakes, we would not be able to survive without neurotypicals keeping things together. I would rather be the charismatic neurotypical mastermind with common sense, street smarts, and cool thinking, one who is a renaissance man rather than a computer savant who needs others to herd him around to where he is needed most.

And really, have any of you considered what it would be like to be neurotypical? Has it not crossed your minds that you may not know what empathy is when felt by them? Our "empathy" may be like a toy car compared to their ferrari. Like the many self proclaimed "asexual" aspergers who like to look with sour grapes at relationships neurotypicals have, maybe they gain untold pleasure and joy from it and were you not asexual you would be able to access that. Like a drug with no side effects that everyone is able to take. Or aspergers who eat the same thing every day thinking strong tasting varied food is illogical or bizarre (cuz its just energy lol) without realizing their may be untold pleasure enjoying different tastes all over the world. This may be a "drug" that they cannot access and look upon it with sour grapes as well!

I hope I have enlightened some of you!

Last edited by johnnyh on 11 Sep 2016, 4:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

edit: double post

Baron-Cohen's Empathizing Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ) tests.

Introduction
The empathizing–systemizing theory developed by autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen proposes that on a level below normal personality there are individual differences in the wiring of the brain that result in two different modes a person may process information: empathizing and systemizing. The theory developed out of Baron-Cohen's work with autism where he hypothesized that the autism spectrum is an expression of extreme systemizing, he also adapted it into the extreme male brain theory of autism. E-S theory, particularly its connection to gender differences, is controversial.

The Systemizing Quotient (SQ) was developed by Baron-Cohen, Richler, Bisarya, Gurunathan, and Wheelwright (2003) and the Empathizing Quotient (EQ) was developed by Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (2004) for use in research and to substantiate empathizing–systemizing theory.

Procedure
This test consists of 120 statements that you must rate on the scale of (1) strongly disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) slightly agree (4) strongly agree. It will take most people ten to twenty minutes to complete.

Participation
Your participation in this assessment in voluntary and should be strictly for educational purposes. It is not psychological advice of any kind. Your answers will be recorded and possibly used for research and/or otherwise distributed in an anonymous fashion.


My score was EQ 14/SQ 35

Below average on the empathy quotient and average on the systemizing quotient. No big surprise on the empathy. But, I am a software engineer and I would have expected a higher systemizing quotient. It is strange, maybe some type of confirmation bias since I kept most of my answer in the middle range.

That compassion and sympathy, not empathy.

Well, since you're here to enlighten us, perhaps you could explain something to me.



When they say "put yourself in another person's shoes" do they mean:
A) imaginatively put yourself in their position and circumstances to see how you would feel and then project that feeling onto them?
or
B) imaginatively put yourself in their position and adopt a persona based on what you know about them to infer how they feel about it and then check with them to see if the inference is correct?

Based on my observations, most of the time when people talk about empathy they mean A. The empathy they display is most effective when dealing with people most like themselves and quickly breaks down as differences in culture and experience multiply. It certainly doesn't seem to be able to work across any neurological differences — otherwise they would presumably stop treating autistics the way they do.

If anything, I would describe A as just a form of narcissistic projection.

By contrast, when people do B, asking questions to check if their inferences are correct — which would seem to be a prerequisite for actually understanding what someone else is feeling — is labeled as showing a lack of empathy, implying that empathy is a form of knowing that requires no verification.

All this, I must admit, somewhat confuses me.

Any explanations that can help clear that up would be most welcome.