Confused about empathy

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Well what do you know, after 50 years of excruciating effort to make sense of the bizarre world around me, I go and get a diagnosis of AS. I guess it makes sense and I feel a bit stupid for not working this out for myself (defense: peculiar frame of reference to troubleshoot from) but what doesn't make sense at all is the supposed lack of empathy that is reported as being a hallmark of this thing.

When diagnosed I got an Empathy Quotient of 12 out of 80 which, I guess, puts me firmly in sociopath territory but I don't recognize this at all. Heck, I even routinely empathize with inanimate objects... e.g I actually feel deep inside the strain of bending things or of current flowing in wires. As for living things this is where it gets confusing. For starters, I know where I am with animals: I feel for them greatly. I once trod on a baby hedgehog in the dark and although I only winded it, I was upset about the accident for months. My pet cat died last year and I still cry for him. Not for me and my loss but because I always used to empathize with him. I used to look into his eyes and see out on the world as I thought it would look to a cat. I do this all the time: "getting in the wrong place".

But here's the hard bit: when I do this with other humans it's often unpleasant. I guess that this is coloured by the disgusting things I see humans doing all the time and, frankly, I'm not impressed. OK so I could be branded a misanthropist. But I think it's a perfectly justifiable position. After all what is the scariest and most irresponsible species on the planet? And I don't know how far this thing called empathy is supposed to go, but I even get out of breath if I watch someone struggling to give an interview after competing in some sport or other - or if a speaker is not breathing in when I would when talking.

So this is what's confusing me - I would score myself as off-the-scale in empathy, (while not seeing this as being inconsistent with misanthropy) yet somehow the AS diagnosis massively contradicts this.

I don't know this for sure, but I am guessing that in the technical jargon, an empathetic response might be distinguished from a sympathetic response. With an empathetic response being one that causes the responder to feel the same emotional state, and a sympathetic response being one that causes concern or compassion.

Going by this idea, I would have little or no empathy, but a great deal of sympathy and compassion.

Notably wikipedia's entry on empathy says: "Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion." This is not something I can relate to, because for me, compassion and empathy are the same thing. Obviously they are talking about two different things, but I usually experience only one, and while I think I have experienced a purely empathetic response, I certainly don't need that to feel compassion.

An alternate theory I have is that neurotypicals have extremely impaired sympathy, and cannot empathize with anything perceived as different, and have little or no sympathy or understanding towards anything they do not get an empathetic response from. If this second guess is right, then they would not be able to perceive or understand empathy in anything they didn't empathize with, since they aren't capable of sympathy or understanding outside of an empathetic response.

In the end I simply don't understand, and am just guessing.

I am 60 and I cry reallt easily. I know I was not normal in the second grade - when I looked around and saw that no one saw or felt me and that I seamed to feel them all - I think that they have it wrong it is not that we don't have empathy but that is it posible that we are over loaded by the people and or things around us and so we have a wall of protection and so it appears as though we have no empathy - just my thoughts - I am very emotional and I see others feelings and stuff but do not react to them I think to survive the emotions or not let them over power me

This subject has come up numerous times (not that there's anything wrong with it comming up again) Here's a few search terms off the top of my head:

"cognitive empathy"
"affective empathy"
"intense world theory/syndrome/hypothesis"

Just because you don't have much empathy, doesn't mean you can't be sympathetic.
It's not easy to put yourself in another person's shoes if you've never experienced what they are going through

Thanks for taking a stab at it edgewaters. I would expect "theory of mind" to enter into this somewhere. I'm not sure if Asperger's is lumped in with autism in this respect? I recetly read an arricle in New Scientist that said a lack of theory of mind was to account for a prevalance of no-beleivers in god among those on the autistic spectrum. Interesting thesis but while being sufficient I can vouch for it being unnecessary.

I beleive I posess an overactive theory of mind ascribing thoughts and feelings to a wide variety of things having dubious degrees of sentience (as an initial, unconsidered, response - I'm not a complete fruitcake). Yet I get the impression this is not supposed to be seen in those with AS.

Is the percentage of atheists within the spectrum community high than the percentage of atheists within the NT community?

My kids both fall somewhere on the spectrum and I believe my dad does too. They all feel for animals more than people, I think. If, for example, a human dies in a movie, they do not seem to care. But they will not watch a movie in which they know an animal will die. They cannot tolerate it.

For me, sympathy is literally feeling someone else's pain. Empathy is the ability to imagine what it is like to be in their shoes and understand how they feel. Compassion is what happens when your empathy compels you to do something to help someone else.

I think for many on the spectrum, they are very high in sympathy. They feel other people's emotions and pain.

Regarding empathy, from watching my children what I can say is that it isn't that they don't feel empathic. They often don't pick up on subtle cues, so they cannot identify how the other person feels. It is hard to display empathy when you are unaware of the internal state of someone else. However, when you put to words how someone feels, they both--particularly my son--are exceptionally empathic and compassionate.

I can understand how someone would find much of human behavior to be undeserving of compassion and empathy. Much of it leaves me filled with despair because I cannot understand how one human could treat another one so poorly.

The only religion that seems at all natural to me, is one that features a degree of animism (the belief that individual spirits inhabit individual things such as a rock or a tree or what have you, and animals and people as well). I sometimes indulge in this or a closely related and vaguely defined polytheism, as a sort of fantasy or outlet (but I do not actually believe in the existance of anything supernatural)

I would say that the position expressed by the article you mentioned, is coloured by religious supremacism and moral superiority (although I haven't read it - just at first glance from what you describe of it). If non-believers lack the theory of mind to understand believers, the opposite would be just as true. Moreover, while I am atheist, I can fully comprehend the motivation towards belief - I simply choose not to succumb to it.

I just posted a topic on this idea here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt203776.html

The "lack of Theory of Mind" theory is the theoretical basis (you could even say it's the definition) of all autistic spectrum disorders. It was put forth by Simon Baron-Cohen and 2 other authors in the 1980's. Whether the theory is correct is a valid question, though.

I think it complete BS.

Simon Baron-Cohen wrote a book called "Zero Degrees of Empathy" which described brain typologies, and indirectly associated autism traits with narcissism, antisocial personality disorder and sociopathy. Many may know him as a relative of Sascha Baron-Cohen (Ali G, Borat, Bruno) but Simon is mostly known for his research on theory of mind (ToM) in autism.

Unfortunately, I think despite his high research profile, Simon is catastrophically wrong concerning his view of empathy in autism.

I believe this largely stems from the fact that "empathy" is a rather unscientific and misleading terminology. I imagine that his observations of individuals on the low-functioning end of autism has distorted the validity of this theory, as many aspies on the high-functioning are empathic, and it could even be argued have a higher sense of moral and social justice (value "fairness" and logic, and are less susceptible to subjective bias).

The central flaw in Cohen's argument is neglecting to factor in "conscientiousness". One can be conscientiousness, but not necessarily have the natural inclination to be outwardly empathic. For instance, some NT's are able to feel moved emotionally by a piece of film or music and cry. These NTs also bond with others more easily and tend to engage in more group-formation behaviors on average (extroverted, comfort-seeking behavior). It is equally true that people on the AS spectrum also feel moved emotionally, but feel that the "crying" behavior is unnecessary and instead internalize their emotion. My view is that people on the AS tend to be naturally introverted and fairly sensitive to rejection in social situations. This sometimes makes NTs view those with AS (subconsciously) as "aloof" for appearing disinterested in their social stories. The cognitive type of AS also means that a systematizing perspective is preferred, but this is not equitable with sociopathic tendencies (it is most likely that people who are AS are INTJ/INTP, and rely less on emotional-cognitive thinking).

I prefer using the terms "social cognition" and "social perception" instead of empathy. The ability to effectively read and respond to other's emotions is a bottom-up process. Sociopaths are able to read other's emotions and "fake" empathy but not necessarily experience them (opting for self-interest). People who are AS may not be as skilled in interpreting micro-expressions (facial stimuli) and other content, but nonetheless this difficulty in experiencing the emotion of others is not evidence in itself for a lack of empathy, but a lack of emotional "reciprocity" (this term refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions).

As a consequence, it may be that the person with AS understands if an action is harmful, but because of a difficulty in perception and cognition, some behaviors are misinterpreted as being "rude". (e.g. some people expect an apology for a given action. Most NTs will "apologise" to "appease" the second-party, but if someone with AS is being asked to apologise for a behaviour in which they feel they did no wrong, then there is no reason to apologise).

It could also be that a misunderstanding of the thoughts, motivations and perspective of others would generally result in a false-positive for lack of empathy. This thread here explains it in better detail http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt203776.html

Another problem with empathy is, if you take a "moral relativist" stance (akin to Nietzschean philosophy) the concept of empathy is entirely unnecessary. If morality is not drawn from a "higher power" but instead consists of neutral actions with varying degrees of co-operation and competition, then empathy becomes more of an "abstract" concept than a "concrete" one. This does not necessarily mean that morality becomes redundant, but I largely suspect that Baron-Cohen's background in Judaism, which emphasizes Kantian "ought/is" thinking has led to a cognitive distortion in Cohen's scientific thinking, and that his book is akin to Ptolemy trying to prove planets rotate around the Earth rather than considering an alternative viewpoint.

I hope what I said makes sense.

analyser23: Thanks for the link to your topic on the same subject. Will read on.
CaptainGrey: You touched on so many points worthy of further discussion. I automatically read "higher power" as Darwinian Selection so there's something morally absolute involved in a statistical sense (hence why so many perceive a deity handing them their core instincts - even though these vary across cultures in different regions). We're apparently operating at some distance from the normal distribution, but I think it's still measurable in this sense.

Empathy confuses the hell out of me and kind of disturbs me when NTs get to be known as ''empathetic people'' and Autistics known as ''very selfish people''. I believe this is overjustifying.
I think empathy is overrated. Most (not all) NTs only have empathy for people who have had similar experiences to them, and those who have empathy for everyone whoever they are and whatever has happened to them seem to get used and took advantage of more. Yes, it's true.