"Aspies lack empathy" - says who?

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NTs are just better at faking empathy(i.e. pretending to care) since they're better at faking everything else. Autistics feel empathy, but don't show it unless its genuine. Meaning when they also feel actual sympathy alongside the empathy.

A lot of the time, NTs will display false-empathy to abide by unwritten social-rules that autistcs don't necessarily care about. I believe this where the "aspies lack empathy" myth originated from.

Emotions are illogical.

Logic is where it's at.

I struggle with the concept of empathy. If I understand it correctly, empathy means not only understanding what a person is feeling (using angry as an example) but somehow feeling their anger with them because you do understand and relate. Like some kind of emotional telepathy? If that is, in fact correct; I do not feel empathy. I can feel sympathy. I can understand that yeah, it sucks to be angry. I do not want people to run around being angry because I have been angry and it is not fun. Sympathy, right? But do I emotionally connect to it? Not so much.

I've actually been told by a few people, namely my father and my grandmother on his side, that I'm extremely empathetic, and I believe them. I've also been told that I seem "cold" and logical, which seems to run counter to this, though I acknowledge I can be this way at times. Now, I sometimes do things without regard for other people, so in that sense I'm not empathetic, but I get "vibes" from people very easily, and the people I'm around can greatly influence how I feel and how I act. It's kind of a conundrum, really.

I think aspies are often at opposite ends of the empathy spectrum; they tend to be extremely empathetic, or not very empathetic at all. I also think there are different types of empathy, and certain people are more or less empathetic in certain ways than others.

I may just be a walking contradiction, extremely empathetic in some ways, and extremely cold in others.

Does anyone else flip-flop between being extremely emotional and extremely logical like I do?

I get the feeling that many people with autism are "walking contradictions."

I think the professionals who first used the term knew exactly what they meant, but subsequent graduates and certainly the popular media have completely misinterpreted and misrepresented the meaning of the term.

The "empathy" referred to has virtually nothing to do with emotion. It is purely a social skill.

"Empathy" in the clinical sense, is the ability to recognize and interpret nonverbal social cues and respond appropriately. It is not identical with "sympathy."

If you walk into a room and see a coworker silently looking out the window, can you tell by their facial expression, body position, breathing or movements if they are more likely to be:

A) people watching out of boredom
B) worrying about a child or other relative
C) contemplating suicide
D) on the verge of a violent outburst

Would it even occur to you to wonder what they were thinking or feeling? If you noticed, would you know what the proper response would be? Would you respond that way naturally, without having to think about it? If so, you have normal empathy. If you would simply carry on with your business and leave without ever wondering what was on their mind, you might be lacking empathy. If you sensed that they might be in need of a hug, or other reassurance but hesitated, awkwardly unsure, until the moment passed and it was too late to do anything, you might have an empathy deficit.

Empathy is about intuiting what's going on in another person's mind by observing their subtle behaviors, automatically sensing what normal people usually need in those circumstances and being able to do it automatically.

Lack of empathy does not mean that you are insensitive to their suffering. More that you aren't likely to notice it unless you're told outright and that even when you do know, you may not know how you should respond to it.

I really appreciate this explanation.

This empathy thing always rubs me the wrong way. It seems to make people see Aspies in a bad light, making them think that we are cold-hearted weirdos, and there are some NT people out there who really are cold-hearted and would do awful things like torture people and animals. Whenever I've come on to forums like these, I see there is a lot of empathy going on. I think the media has drummed it into everybody that Aspies lack empathy so much, that a lot of Aspies just believe it, and are actually more empathetic than they think.

I feel so sorry for Aspie people who write or talk about how they lack empathy, when most of us have been bullied at some point in our lives by NT people. People bully because they don't understand. If people got to be an Aspie for one day, they will realise how it feels to be an Aspie and how overwhelming the world is to us. They just don't understand. Thankfully there are some NTs out there that do understand us and are willing to help us and make us feel worthy and consider our feelings, and those are the ones with better empathy levels. But those who just think that we should ''get over it'' obviously do not know how it feels to be in our shoes.
And yet we're supposed to always put ourselves in other people's shoes, and if we miss something we get accused of lacking empathy, but when an NT is cold towards us they still don't get these ''you lack empathy!'' accusations. It's really annoying.

Also everybody's different. At places like work I've noticed people react in different ways if someone is crying (or even when I've cried before), and the way they react is usually part of their personality. Some people just stand and stare awkwardly at the person crying. Some people go up to them and make a fuss of that person. Some people just sit and talk to them, but don't cuddle them or anything. And some are like ''oh dear, what's happened?'' in a flat sort of way, and perhaps walk back out of the room. I've seen it myself. Personally I'm the sort of person to cry when I see someone else crying, and depending on how close a relationship I have with that person, I go up to them and cuddle them. But there's more to empathy than reacting to someone who is crying. It is not a case of ''oh you stood there awkwardly when someone was crying, that means you must lack empathy!'' Empathy and emotions are more complex than that. It's not just about crying and cuddling.

I think a lot of NTs confuse our inability to read social cues (like a facial expression that says "jeez, I wish she'd stop yammering about Star Trek" or "that joke about the zombie apocalypse was a bit too weird") with an inability to care about what other people feel. Once people let me know what they are feeling, usually by TELLING me, I am concerned and willing to give them whatever they need to feel better. I may need to ASK what they need because i am not great at guessing. I've been the friend who will listen to friends cry about their boyfriends, go to their house at 3am when he left a scary message on their voicemail, and help them pack and move when they need to get out fast. And I was happy to do so (ok, was a bit groggy at 3am, but still willing)! I felt honored to be needed and trusted that way, and i want my friends to feel better.

Joe90, that's a really excellent comment, thank you. You sum up the situation extremely well, particularly how the media and various other ill-informed sources like the dreadful Wikipedia (useful for looking up the population of cities but not much else) always claim that Aspiens lack empathy. But I'm afraid that unqualified, unnuanced statements are the ones that carry weight, they're easier to digest.

I think that's very true.

This post nails it.

NT's do "fake entity" better than people with autism.

However, even NT's are not devoid of it.

BTW, this "lack of empathy" myth has been busted so many times on these boards that I think a topic busting this myth should be prominently stickied to help newcomers.

I am at the point where I believe that ASDers have a far higher amount of affective empathy than NTs and that often proves to be our undoing.

Saying that autistic people lack empathy is like saying Vladimir Putin has Asperger's based upon an X-ray

This 2014 paper found no difference whatsoever between empathetic response:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24424389