Analytical versus Cued Empathy in Autism

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Many of us know that the accepted wisdom about our not having emapthy is bunk, but what is the difference? Most NTs probably rely mostly on their right cortical hemisphere to process facial expressions and other such cues to determine someone's current state of mind. In contrast, we aspies take a more analytical approach. We take their goals, dislikes, and conflicts as inputs to arrive at the emotional response we ourselves would feel in their shoes. We have to adjust our analysis to take into account a discrepancy between their emotional state (as best we can observe it) and the expected emotional state.

In either case, those who have a deficiency in the other way of empathizing will come to believe that people who empathize primarily in the other way are unempathetic and, thus, uncaring. Thus, we aspies find many NTs cold and indifferent to our concerns, but they find us equally cold and indifferent to many of their concerns. They do not make the effort to learn about our different style of interpersonal communication because they assume there is nothing worth learning about.

So they go back to their NT friends, where they can get reassurances when their girl/boyfriend does something silly.

As for me, I've learned a lot about humans in a scientific manner. I observe and watch how other people react to certain things. I have also been fairly blessed that this strategy comes easily to me and therefore, I am fairly well-adapted to a lot of customs humans have. It is actually taking part in many of these silly little customs that I seem to have a problem with.

Difficulties:

-not knowing when a situation calls for an empathic gesture, either verbal or nonverbal

-difficulty with appropriately communicating that empathy

-difficulty with taking another's view point moreso than logically (not saying many NAs don't have this problem either but perhaps they are more eager to socially placate their social partner and are more uncomfortable with dissonance that many Aspies-- or are at least aware of this dissonance to a higher degree and thus more uncomfortable and try harder to avoid it)

Yes, I suppose so. I have a sort of database in my mind, with file folders of each person I know or encounter on a regular basis. I build up information files of their behavior and attitude in various situations in order to better understand how they are acting and their reasons for doing so.

I haven't quite mastered the whole "predict their reaction" thing yet, but I don't really come into contact with many people often enough for that. Generally I just try to stay as neutral and unoffensive as possible. Since I'm naturally rather quiet, it's not too hard.

yeah for me it's always been difficult to know how to react and what people expect of me in certain situations. and if i do know how i "should" react...i sometimes can't because i don't show emotion like others. it would feel fake if i started imitating what others do. it's a tough cookie.

Yes, some years ago, I was working with a woman who used to complain quite a lot about her brother and her sore back. I used to talk to her a fair bit and she seemed quite friendly.

However, she kept on coming into work when her back was sore and not getting medical attention for it and I got to feeling she was being something of a martyr about it.

One afternoon, most of the bosses had gone and she seemed a bit upset but I didn't know what to do. I thought she should have called the doctor to get her back seen to and maybe got some time off.

So anyway, I sat there like a fool, getting more and more uncomfortable by the moment and not knowing what to do. She must have thought I wasn't very sympathetic for then on, she didn't really talk to me.

This was about 10 years ago. I guess now, I would ask "are you all right?" (silly question but that's what seems to be expected) and "can I get someone?".

I tend not to put myself into the other person's shoes. This is what I think they mean regarding cued vs analytical empathy.
Similar to others, I have a database and predict what I think the other person is feeling.
It is my failure to think that I would feel that way that makes me come across as indifferent. I am indifferent. It is not my emotion, so why should I respond to it?
MY prosopagnosia often interferes with my predictive skills. In my work I can ask a person what they are feeling. In a casual conversation with co-workers, I can't. Hence my co-workers have some cognitive dissonance, because clients like me and my co-workers find me unapproachable. And, when I am wrong, I accuse the other person of lying (not always aloud), because if I arrive at a logical assumption about what you should be feeling and you say you are feeling something else, then you must be wrong, right?
Also, I think that I do not give signals, which is interpreted as no signals or the wrong signals. That means that regardless of my process of responding to the other person's emotional output, they are going to perceive me as less empathetic.
Health is a good example. I often classify people in my life as borderline or too seeking of attention because they come with a health concern and I immediately begin problem solving with them. I think what they expect and want is "ow, that hurts you, it would hurt me, therefore I reflect the hurt that you feel and say ow myself." Instead what they get is "Geez, if that hurts, you'd better fix it." Seen as un-empathetic and/or unsympathetic.
Even my CBT therapist can't avoid this. She always goes back to a dependence on our relationship to maintain consistency in the therapy. She was hurt, I think, when I said, this isn't working, I guess I'd better find another therapist.
It does work faster to have a response based on emotional or relational empathy. I am not sure if it works better. NTs use this to manipulate each other and as an excuse for deceit. But I have said this before in another thread, so I'll quit before I'm too redundant.

heheh, i tend to get into problem solving too. my empathy is that i want to help the person fix the problem, instead they just want me to say "oh i'm so sorry about that" with a sad look on my face or give them a hug or something...

It's pretty much how I think, although I use a relational database with SQL, rather than a flat-file database with files and folders.

For instance, let's say I walk into the office in the morning. As I walk towards my desk, I see this girl: she sits four cubicles away from me, and she always smiles at me, almost in a flirty kind of way. As she notices me, she asks: "You look tired, did something keep you awake all night" with a flirty tone. So this is the query I would run:

The retrieved values in the database would be as follows: FacialExp is "smile", Phrase is "Nothing I remember", tone is "Friendly".

And so on, for every social encounter.

That's my problem - I actually try to help people by giving them advice. Since I'm not omniscient my advice isn't perfect and there are some situations where there really isn't anything you can do. I've started trying to make sympathetic noises instead.

Ah, interesting. My memories are more audio/visual based. Sort of like pressing rewind and rewatching them over to compare the details.

This is not as extensive as some people (like Scoots or Magic) have described here. It only works for brief periods of time and on focused subjects.

As I've expressed before, I think Aspies have more empathy than NTs because we need it in order to communicate with them.

NT scientists have concluded that we don't because we have trouble communicating with them. I think its more likely that the verbal and kinestatic language which has evolved to communicate emotions between NTs is useless to us because our internal emotional states aren't like those of an NT, the the language cannot describe them.

Because this emotional language seems very artificial to us, we have to learn it intellectually rather than just picking it up.

yeah same here. i try to find out first if there's anything i can do to help/advise, so i ask questions about stuff so i know where i stand... and then if that doesn't work i just say stuff like, man that sucks or sorry about that.

I learned to do this in reverse. I try to say something like "I'm sorry" or "man, that sucks" first, then try to give advice. I truly don't understand the logic behind it, but that's how NTs seems to like it. And when they're the majority, they set the rules of communication.

Are you suggesting we aspies have an altogether different set of emotions?

How about these, named after places in the UK:

<b>Blackpool</b>: state of rapture-like focus on things that spin, especially if its yourself

<b>Oxford Street</b>: that 'oh my god I've got to get out of here!' social panic that happens when you meet someone you probably ought to recognise but you are not quite sure if you know their face even though they are talking to you like they have known you all your life

<b>Milton Keynes</b>: a blank state of mind where you don't really feel anything but you are starting to get that niggling worry that people's behaviour around you suggests you should be feeling something through empathy and making some kind of reaction in response, only you are not really sure what, when, why or where...

I seem to get these more often than I figure I have any normally labled emotion