Fictional Empathy on the screen

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I have observed several mechanisms at work that can underlie this experience.

1. The brain knows that what you're seeing on screen isn't real, and so the same protective filtering schemas are not applied.
2. Experiencing emotion from people in real-time is far more intense and the brain uses filtering mechanisms, displacement, and blunt-affect in order to reduce the intensity of what is happening.
3. A real situation directly involves you in an aggressive environment where multiple layers of deception may be being used by those around you. This may cause you to ignore your intuitions and stick with logic and reason only in order to protect yourself.

If you think you have trouble with empathy in 'real life', I recommend watching the Louis Theroux documentary: LA Stories Edge of Life.
It's basically about young people who are struggling with cancer. Watching this will confirm if you are capable of empathy in the real world

Thanks. I'm a massive Louis Theroux fan, and I've watched all his stuff since the 90's, so have seen the Documentary you mention, and yes, I do remember it illiciting emotional response, like a lot of his stuff, particularly the more recent, darker documentaries as opposed to the funnier, lighter ones where he visits deluded nutjobs who believe they're in an interstellar war with Aliens etc.

It's not that real life emotons do not register with me, it seems that it needs to be much more intense to do so. So, something as sad as young people battling Cancer, or hearing a Parent describe in tears the death of their child due can and will make me cry. But, watching a Movie; for example E.T, just the music building as they fly through the sky on Elliott's bike can be enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my eyes water.

Well I could be wrong, but I don't think this attribute has anything to do with ASD. It could just be labelled as 'intensity'.

Once a friend told me that never saw me get anywhere near attached to a person as i am/was with some video game characters. Well... I couldn't argue because she showed some very convincing arguments lol