Empathy myth

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That makes sense. I can't connect to other people's mind either but I do feel the way I would feel if I were that person which may be actually upsetting to me more than it is to them, where to me sympathy is understanding that person's pain without actually feeling it. My son, who is nine and ASD will see someone get physically hurt and he will remark that it actually makes him hurt and will automatically rub his foot or leg like it actually happened to him. He doesn't seem to have the urge to do something to help the injured person so I guess that is not empathy either.

I still don't entirely ''get'' what empathy is. Does it mean just being aware of one's social actions? But even with that, it can sometimes seem quite hard to imagine everybody being 100 percent certain they know what they are doing socially. Surely not every intention is geared around how they want one to feel. Like when people stare at me in public. Yes, some may stare to deliberately intimidate. But others might just give an obvious gaze because it may just be natural in most people to give eye contact to other people (whether they know you or not), which just some people like me with social anxiety and paranoia might just interpret it as judging.


I've come up with 3 examples, and I want to see which one means having empathy involved:-

1. An adult puts a child into a bath full of extremely hot water, and didn't feel the water first to make sure it was at a comfortable temperature. The child yells because it is too hot, and the adult worries then takes the child straight out and apologizes for the mistake, and cools the water down a little and puts the child back in, without meaning to burn the child.

2. An adult puts a child into a bath full of extremely hot water, but is aware that the water is dangerously hot but deliberately puts the child into the water anyway. The child yells, just as the adult expected, but the adult can't be bothered to sort the water out to make the child feel more comfortable, because the adult is not very nice, and so is just intentionally burning the child.

3. An adult puts a child into a bath of extremely hot water, having checked the water beforehand to see if it is comfortable enough to put the child in. The water feels hot, but feels nice on the adult's hand when she tested it, but the water feels differently to the child because the child is actually in it and it is hotter when actually sitting in it than it feels with just dipping your hand into it. The child yells, but the adult gets confused and thinks ''well it wasn't painfully hot when I dipped my hand in there.....maybe the child is screaming about something else'', and carries on washing the child, unintentionally burning the child.

30. I thought I'd do better though.

To me empathy is the ability to put oneself in another's shoes, and act accordingly. Very important: it is not about what would I do if I was at someone else's situation, but what would I do if I WAS them; from their point of view, their experiences, their beliefs, in order to really understand them. ALthough most of us can't do that intuitively, workarounds exist.

I got 14

I dont think thats a very good test for measuring empathy though.

Just because I dont show empathy the way other people do dosent mean I dont have any. If anything I think I have more than some people I know.

I gave up after the 3rd question. There was only 4 more questions for you. Whey did you give up then? lol
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I usually just ask the person in distress if they're ok. I won't know what to say or do after that, so I just let it be without trying to seem as awkward.

Mine is 67.

I think it would be easier to be 30 than 67. When it's that high, it can be overwhelming and overload you constantly, it forces you to disconnect from it completely if you want to function on a daily basis. At least you can use yours naturally and then make up for the rest intellectually.

Although you do have a pretty good definition.

You really are pretty high. You are a pretty rare autistic. Actually the first person in this thread to say it was "high" and then back it up, which means you're pretty self-aware too.

I think 50 or so is the best place to be.

Apparently about 10%-15% of us score higher than the average NT. This trend is more common in women with AS than with men with AS.
The problem though essentially is the same - since we must disconnect from it on a daily basis in order to be functional or risk constantly overloading, we often appear to lack it or have very little - hence the complaints from everyone else.

Where does the 10-15% figure come from? I think you are maybe the second person here who has gotten above average, and the other poster was convinced she had autism as a kid and grew out of it.

Anyway, if I actually cared about people, I might be above average too. I got 32 answering all the questions through an "I hate people" prism.

Last edited by Tyri0n on 15 Apr 2013, 11:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I got 14. and I only got 15 on the SQ (systemizing quotient) which I took a long time ago so I'm way below average in understanding both people and things. The first time I took this test , the EQ, I scored 10.

Edit:I don't have an intellectual disability, amazingly enough. When tested as a kid my verbal IQ was superior range.

It depends on the type of test. Some have shown it at 8%, others 12%, apart from the original 10 and 15. It seems to depend on exactly what is being tested. Some score quite high on compassion, but very low on the socially appropriate short or long term rationalizing selfishness than often acts as what NT's call empathy. Or sometimes it's the other way around, but sice we are less inclined to do social interaction or don't know how to do it appropriately, we often score lower anyway.

Two studies one in Australia and the other UK in which variables were accounted for carefully showed that. The Australian one was 2008 but not available to the public, I have access to it through work. I can't recall when the UK one was done. And the other one, the first major study done solely on women with AS showed women are more likely than males with AS to end up as part of that 10% or so (I'll use the lower one for now).

I'm not the only one here with a high score, other posters have posted quite high scores in the past too - marshall (but it was a while ago, not this time), theaspiemusician, slowmutant, earthmonkey, sora and cockneyrebel to name a few. At least 20 others scoring within average range. And that's just from memory, I'm sure there's more. I have seen a few with scores higher than mine.

Hmmm... I don't remember my past score. I think the problem with the affective empathy part is it can be hard to self-assess without bias towards an ideal self image. I sometimes don't know how much I truly feel by nature and how much I feel because I see it as the right thing in a moral sense.

Your past one was quite high... 48 I believe.

I hear that some Aspergians have trouble empathizing, while others get it so strongly that it's overwhelming. So 'too much empathy' can be a symptom, too.

Actually I just took the test while reading this thread and scored 48. Its above average for a male but in the average range overall. If I scored 48 a long time ago in a different thread that means I'm more consistent than I thought.