Revisiting Empathy in Asperger Syndrome

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If love isn't an emotion, what is it? What else could it be?

Fantasy 4, Perspective Taking 12, Empathic Concern 4, Personal Distress 10.

Unsurprisingly I do reasonably well on what's described as "cognitive empathy" but very poorly on "emotional empathy."

Fantasy 27, Perspective Taking 19, Empathic Concern 19, Personal Distress 19.


Huh.

Fantasy: 25; Persective-taking: 2; Empathic Concern: 22; Personal Distress: 17

I think I have empathy although confused with the term itself. I find myself concerned with other's well being if I know them. If I hear of a new story about something bad happening to someone such as their house burning down, I get upset for the other person (probably sympathy).

I've been through alot of situations that put me in alot of different enviroments which the change drove me crazy growing up but definetly made me more understanding of others and different situations.

What I don't understand is why is it that autistics are called unempathetic, sociopaths as well yet there are alot of rich people that have no empathy for homeless people and the poor but make themselves look better by donating to charities that go to Africa and will only feed the children that joins their religion.

I see alot of unempathetic people that are considered society's greatest.

I do think empathy in autistic's should be revisited. Empathy I think for everyone is something that is scenerio based relating to what the person has experienced themselves too or seen.

There's also those who pretend they can empathise but how can they really empathise if they know nothing on the subject or have been in that situation too?

Has there been a study on those who claim they have empathy on situations they have never really been apart of?

This is what I’ve thought all along. The theory of Baron-Cohen is referring to cognitive empathy which is an intuition for the mental state of another person based on imagining yourself from the other person’s perspective. Yet when laypeople use the word empathy they’re almost always referring to a combination of cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. Emotional empathy alone is really just sympathy IMO.

"Love" - "tennis". I get it!

I've been working on attempting to be more empathetic towards people, but my success varies. In some cases I am way over the top on my own emotions. My meltdowns tend to not be violent (though sometimes that happens too), but crying jags.

My ability to empathize depends on the situation and how much of my life experience is in it. So I don't tend to empathize with the person who has a broken arm or leg since that has (thank God) never happened to me. I empathize a bit more with the person who has gotten in an accident and totaled their car (since I have done that). But that still isn't a strong emotional reaction.

On the other hand, there was a story this past spring from Florida of a kindergarten boy who is an Aspie, and his teacher stood him up in front of the class and had the other students list all the problems they found with him, calling him "disgusting", "nasty", etc. And then the teacher had the students vote him out of the classroom. My reaction to that story was WAY over the top, and I cried hard over it.

The NT stereotypes of "what a man is supposed to be" means that I shouldn't be crying over such things. I should just "suck it up", "man up", whatever. And maybe it is just from the heavy amount of bullying that I endured in Jr High and somehow I am reliving my own broken emotions from 35 years ago. I still have a level of post traumatic stress left over from my Jr High years.

Or maybe it is the fact that this story from Florida was such a young boy (what was he? age 5 or 6?) and I wouldn't have quite that level of empathy for an adult Aspie who was socially abused in this way. I'm not sure. Perhaps I have more of an emotional attachment to the "young boy within myself" and so my emotions are more involved in such things. I recently saw the movie "The Boy In The Striped Pajamas" and I still cannot speak about the movie without crying.

Is that weird for an adult Aspie to be overly emotionally involved like this?

Baron Cohen's empathy is a mixture of emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and conversational skills (Yes, you have to have good conversational skills to be empathic in his definition - seriously). Scientists do not get to decide what empathy means. Language is a living thing and if ordinary people use empathy to refer to emotional stuff, then that is one valid meaning. I think that's why it's so important to have scales that measure multiple types of empathy instead of lumping it all together under one murkily defined term.

Not for me. I really have to keep walls up a lot of the time to cope.

My results are mostly stable. Edit: Though persective-taking doubled.

Prior results from May 21, 2008

Current results are
Fantasy: 8;
Persective-taking: 20;
Empathic Concern: 1;
Personal Distress: 4;

From what I gather, that means I'm somewhat aware of what's going on, but I'm not emotionally involved.

Fantasy: 15
Persective-taking: 13
Empathic Concern: 17
Personal Distress: 20

I haven't been tested or diagnosed with Asperger's (though I hope to be fairly soon), but many of the symptoms fit. There are only three that don't.. & one of them is empathy. I have a lot of empathy & always have. One of the reasons I worry about bringing up the subject to my psychiatrist or therapist is because of this.


Your scores:

Fantasy Scale: 21

Perspective Taking: 13

Empathic Concern: 26

Personal Distress: 20

Male, aspergers, Fantasy: 10; Persective-taking: 8; Empathic Concern: 9; Personal Distress: 2

What is the baseline for typical people?

I've been thinking what's said in that study for a while now, really. I'm glad a professional came to the same conclusion. I've never quite understood why people say that autistics have NO empathy.

As for the test - some of those questions were hard for me. Especially the ones about fiction, but some about real people too. Do I feel for people? Yes, SOME people. But often it's people I know or can relate to. I might not be able to imagine myself as the HERO of a story (because of how most heroes are portrayed in media, I don't), but I might be incredibly aware of the perceptions and feelings of a side character who no one else much notices or cares about. Likewise in real life. I have empathy for people, but it's not universal, and it usually only applies to certain people, or people in certain situations. Therefore, I don't think that my results for this test would necessarily be accurate.

the means for university students published with the original scale are here:
http://www3.telus.net/anemonecerridwen/autismdavis.htm

I haven't compared the means Davis published with the means in this study. I expect they're similar. I should do that, shouldn't I . . .