why are people with Autism considered to lack empathy?

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Hello.
I thought i would start a thread on empathy, or should i say, what many regard as a lack of empathy in people who suffer from ASD (including Asperger Syndrome).

I was wondering what people's thoughts were on the subject.

Personally, i think that there are perhaps 3 main factors.
1: Low IQ (in people who have low IQs).
People with lower IQ's may not realise when people are hurt.

2: Sensory impairment / other mental health problems.
People with sensory impairment or and mental health problems may be too overwhelmed with their own head full of monkeys to be aware of others problems, and thus perceived lacking in empathy.

3. Long term victim of bullying and isolation.
Now, this may be hard for normal people to understand, however, if you have spent your life suffering at the hands of neurotypical people, have spent your entire life being subjected to bullying, exclusion, having all your work stolen from you, having all your friendships and romantic relationships ruined, having been ignored for jobs, job promotion and other opportunities. I speculate that some people who suffer from ASD may start to feel quiet bitter and angry towards the world, and thus, stop feeling sorry for people who have lived a good life to a point, when they suddenly have something bad happen to them. From some ASD sufferers, they may think "well i have spent my life suffering at the hands of you people and no one was sorry for me nor did any one help".

Isolation when coupled with anxiety disorders and other mental health problems is a volatile mix that is fated to ruin.
When people worry and ruminate, i believe they are more likely to harbour unhealthy thoughts, perceptions and opinions of the world and the people in it. Easy for someone to lose themself in what the Dalai Lama calls destructive emotions, which if left unchecked, may result in a person losing their empathy.

Now, i profess, i do not know it all and am simply speculating. Trying to work out why it is.

One last factor i have considered is to do with world view, logic and moral values.
When one has a black and white logical way of viewing the world, when someone breaks the rules or logic,
then the outcome is the result of their actions and perhaps less deserving of empathy than otherwise.

Any one else have any thoughts on the matter.
Thanks

I think it's not that people with Autism lack empathy, so much as they have difficulty knowing how to recognize what other people are feeling (interpreting facial expressions and tone) and knowing how they are "supposed" to respond to it (with trying to make the other person feel better vs. stimming or acting out, etc.)

Here's an article I found that talks about the issue in more detail:
https://www.verywellhealth.com/do-peopl ... thy-259887

This one is good too:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... y-disorder

This article talks about empathy, autism and the connection to a condition called alexithymia. Alexithymia is the inability to recognize your own emotions and it is connected to lack of empathy for other people. It occurs in people with many different behavioral health disorders. The study showed that not everyone who has autism also has alexithymia. Interestingly, it also concluded that people who have both autism and alexithymia are actually less likely to be hurtful to other people than those who have alexithymia but not autism. "Although people who have alexithymia but not autism find it acceptable to say hurtful things to others, people who have both autism and alexithymia do not. We think people with autism use other information (such as social rules) to decide whether what they say will be hurtful, rather than relying on their understanding of emotions."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -empathy1/

I think what you have described in this sentence pretty much is a definition of empathy (lack of).

My impression is that people tend to confuse the meaning of the word empathy with the word sympathy, and that as a consequence, when they react against the assertion that "autistic people often lack empathy," what they are actually reacting to is their mistaken belief that the assertion "autistic people tend to be unsympathetic to others" is being made.

I agree that we need to be clear about what is meant by empathy. The Psychology Today blog that I posted would call your definition "shallow empathy" in the sense that a person is able to interpret what is going on externally. The blog proposed that while some autistic people may lack shallow empathy, they could instead be more capable of "deep empathy," which is feeling what the other person is feeling (not in a "psychic" way but in the sense of being able to imagine yourself experiencing what the other person is experiencing). I don't know if that experience is common to people with autism (and obviously for those who lack communication skills it might not even be possible to know one way or another) but it is an interesting idea.

Sure. I understand your opinion. I agree, although some of the psychologists have also written extensively on what they felt was a lack of empathy as a major trait of Asperger Syndrome.

Hans Asperger, who of course the syndrome is named after made the first observations.
Not saying that his observations were correct.

I personally am extremely empathetic for most people, apart from people who I have history with who have:

have tried to murder me (I am not joking)
have stolen from me significant items or money
have spread vicious slander about me

not that I take revenge, but I certainly am less sympathetic if such people get into trouble and am less interested in helping such people, which may sound harsh and not very Christian, however I do forgive some, as long as they don't cross the line. The people above have all crossed my line. So my help line is no longer available to them. Not that it is my duty in life to help these people.

I am personally more into the "intense world theory" for Autism, although not a very widely accepted model.
It does appear to fit my own predicament.

I was wondering however, if there are many people with Autism out there who really do not feel empathy.
I wonder if watching people get hurt is like watching violent cartoons. Happy Tree House people or itchy and scratchy.

Cheers

This is why;
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10. ... lNpQYa_Yc&

In short, Autistic people struggle to read NTs, but NTs have just as much trouble reading us.
However NTs being the majority, aren't used to not reading people so the blame either way is put on us, and NTs decide we must not have empathy based primarily on this.

I think one has first to have an agreed set of definitions of what is meant by empathy, and how it differs from sympathy and compassion. As has been said, psychologists distinguish also between types of empathy, especially cognitive and affective. My understanding is that it is specifically cognitive empathy that is often considered to be deficient in many autistic people. By contrast, they may have normal or even enhanced affective empathy, and compassion.

Many of the examples that people tend to give in order to try to counter this assertion of reduced cognitive empathy are really examples involving affective empathy, sympathy or compassion, and thus they are not actually counter-examples to the specific assertion.

I consider myself to be a compassionate person, and yet I cannot deny that I get an anomalously low score on the Empathy Quotient questionnaire of Baron Cohen and his collaborators. Largely, I think, because I am not good at getting into other people's minds, seeing things from their point of view, and understanding how to react to them.

Things like lack of empathy pertain more to those with significant to severe autism. I don't think it's something most aspies have an issue with.

For me as someone with moderate to severe autism there's a general overall disconnection from others.

Because Simon Baron-Cohen theorized that we lack empathy and his theory became widely accepted.

I don't suffer from these, well, other than sensory impairment but not to the degree that it fills me head and thus making little space to process the finer points of people around me:

1: Low IQ (in people who have low IQs).
2: Sensory impairment / other mental health problems.
3. Long term victim of bullying and isolation.


My IQ is in the 99.5 percentile. Sensory issues do not cause me to fail to read other people. I am not a long term victim of bullying.

I just don't understand what people are trying to say unless they actually say it. I can (most of the time) see and understand that someone is upset or angry but I find it very hard to understand what has made them feel that way. Upon identifying that someone is feeling upset or angry I then fail to understand how to respond and behave. Over the years it's become clear that people want or expect a certain response so I often give a "oh dear" or a hug, but it's more of a default token gesture than a genuine caring and understanding response.

I took me a long time to figure out if my wife was crying due to joy or misery, and I still have issues with it sometimes!

I think a lot of the issue is that NT people identify the emotion, understand why they would feel such a way, know what they would want as a response and therefore provide that response to the other person. Speaking for myself, if I feel upset or angry I don't want or need a response from anyone, I just analyse the cause and formulate an action. I don't need a hug or words from someone that will have no tangible effect on the cause of my feelings - as a result I expect that the person I see upset is naturally doing the same.......so leave them to it.

Why do you assume autistic people have low IQs?

I find IQ hard. I've never been officially measured. I've taken some tests which went towards the special reasoning thing where I got extremely low and some which veered towards the verbal where I got far higher.

(People on reddit keep saying I'm humble bragging so I'm being vague here on purpose. I suspect humblebragging is just made up by NTs but maybe it really does annoy people when people are honest in positive ways about themselves)

It's just because we're the minority.

Everyone empathises by guessing what they'd want or feel in the other person's position but because we're not NT, that leads us to false conclusions. That's why NTs can't empathise back either.

And we're more individual than I suspect they are so sometimes it's hard to empathise between aspies too. Because of that 'how would I feel in their shoes' approach not working.

Empathy is something that exists in the mind first and foremost, and the mind is something that cannot be seen directly. In order to appear empathic, one must give some kind of verbal or visual signal; this is where those on the AS can struggle.

I think some of it might be problems with communication.

I'm reminded of the story of the little boy who, at the centre of attention in a crowded room, was told at great sympathetic length that his mother had died. He listened to the very end. The people held their breath, to know how he would take it, ready to jump in and help him somehow. But his only answer was, "Can I go out and play now?"

Translated, this might mean, "I gotta get out of this crowd before I explode" but we are rarely accompanied by people who can anticipate and express what we're feeling. Equally, we're are often not equipped with the right things to say.

The only answer is unconditional love.

I believe that any little boy or girl would have had the same response.

It’s not a lack of caring. It’s because they’re little children.

One book on aspergers by an aspie author distinquished "empathy" from "sympathy". Empathy is TOM (theory of mind). Sympathy is being concerned about other folks suffering. Aspies can have tons of sympathy, but lack empathy.

My riff on what the author said is (a) we MAY have empathy in the sense of meaning TOM, but unfortunelty our TOM is for minds like our own, and not NT minds, and (b) the reverse of autism/aspergers is what sociopaths are. Sociopaths have empathy, but no sympathy (and that's why sociopaths are dangerous to everyone else, and why aspies are only a danger to themselves).