Revisiting Empathy in Asperger Syndrome

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I really don't understand why so many people get worked up over empathy. I know I have empathy in some situations, but compared to most "normal" people I know, I am definitely lacking. But that doesn't bother me. It bothered me as a child because I thought something was wrong with me, that I was "evil". But as an adult, my lack of empathy does not bother me one bit. Why should it?

I hate the way a lot of the questions are worded, but still... good test.

fantasy18
perspective14
19 empathic
15 distress

I think it's kind of wrong. I can relate to movies extremely well if they're really good (often daydreaming that I, personally, am in the plot of the film/the film's universe interacting with that element rather than being one of the characters). I wish it hadn't asked about books so much because I never read fiction.

I clicked on "what does it mean" but it didn't actually answer my question. Am I broken?

Eeep! I guess I should have another look at this.

YAY! Somebody LIKES us! Somebody RESPECTS us enough to actually bother to note that we have feelings no different from NTs!

I would like to apologize for my sloppy statistics. I think I've done it right now.
I used t=(our mean-Davis's mean)/(our SD/sqrt(n)). It turns out I could have used that all along.
I'm not 100% sure of this or of the cutoffs (I will go over it again later when I can get a textbook out of the library), but it's better. Or at least it's more accurate. Thank you, outlier, for calling me on this.

So what we have right now is a win-win situation. If you want to argue that we have less empathy, there are statistically significant differences (more so for men). On the other hand, if you want to argue that overall we're all over the map same as other people, you can do that, too. I've added charts so you can see the range.

I'm so tired I'm almost in tears. I don't know why I'm so sloppy when it comes to statistics, but it usually takes a few takes before I've got all the errors ironed out. I'm not one of these calm organized types who gets it right the first time. (Though my instincts are good - see charts.) I'm hoping that maybe that's not so abnormal, and that WP can be the kind of place where we can help each other iron out our arguments, instead of having to get everything right first time out. It's confusing because WP is public but at the same time it's what we've got for conversation. At least it's all I've got. And you have to have some sort of feedback to make proper sense of things. At least I do.

Anyways, I'm going to bed. Hope things are better in the morning.

My scores

Fantasy:14
Perspective-taking: 10
Concern:17
Personal Distress: 15

No one I know in real-life would believe these scores. While my empathy might be less than the average persons, what I feel bothers me greatly. I am big into volunteer work, I hate the thought of hurting people's feelings, and I want to spend my career helping autistics as a neurologist and researcher.

Happy to see this. It's really interesting, and really cool.

Fantasy:13
Perspective-taking: 12
Empathic Concern:12
Personal Distress: 14

Same here (apart from the neurologist part). Some call me an excellent listener and understanding. I found the test difficult; I could think of different answers to the same question depending on the situation. Once I'm triggered properly, I can experience a lot of distress and concern, whereas other times I'll not feel anything; my reactions are inconsistent. I also feel distressed every day, but not about the things mentioned in the test.




I recall Rogers found that those on the spectrum did not have less empathy (i.e., empathic concern) than controls, and therefore the AS group was not impaired in emotional empathy. Other studies might still replicate this result.




Yes, just as we are a more diverse group than controls in most studies. There's a lot of misleading information out there on spectrum traits as a result of authors not taking this great diversity into account. E.g., many will simply say "poor at reading nonverbal cues", when really the SDs in such studies can be very large; often much larger than for controls.

I am not sure what you meant about the last part you wrote about mistakes and arguing. However, if calling attention to the stats caused distress, it was not intentional. Feedback of research occurs even during public lectures, but I forgot how it took some getting used to. Most comments by others are fine, but sometimes not; I'd receive such blunt comments as "useless" about minor matters, such as some extraneous line in a paragraph. One person, I assume due to my lack of prosody, commented that my presentation was "dull." A combination of such would result in meltdown when alone.

I think so. And even if they don't, it's still showing we do have a fair amount as a group, rather than none at all. And there are multiple reasons to have less empathy than the average person does, that have nothing to do with innate traits: We might be too tired. We might have a hard time feeling empathy when people bully us all the time and expect us to feel empathy for them. Etc.



I'm having issues come up for me over perfectionism versus the kind of person I am - nothing to do with anyone else, but it does make me feel vulnerable. Every time I get a pm from someone I'm in terror as to what's in it, even though they're always fine. I'm one of those people who leaps quickly then checks the facts, and I feel like I'm not supposed to be like that, even though my instincts are usually good. I guess I make a better action hero than scientist. I have a sister like that too, and I think we clashed because we reminded each other we're both like that (and I guess we both got the message not to be like that).

It's good that WP can function as a place where we can figure out what we think and refine our arguments. I just have to keep reminding myself I don't have to get it perfect on the first post.

My Scores:

Fantasy: 15

Perspective Taking: 26

Empathic Concern: 24

Personal Distress: 16

Ok after reading all of these it is clear that those of us on the ASD Spectrum are VERY diverse in our scores and i'm not so sure how those scores would corrospond to us in real-life situations but it's very interesting none the less. Whoever put in the DSM-IVTR that we lack empathy was only looking at things on the surface and obviously we know that just because things on the surface seems that way that DOES NOT mean it affects us the same way INTERNALLY and in some cases like my own i can go from unattached to ambivalent in a matter of seconds depending on what state of mind i'm in and the situation and circumstances. Well hey, at least they are for us getting respect and they don't act like we're unemotional robots! LOL

The lack of empathy here was the first thing I noticed as a new person when I started coming to this site. People are so upset by their own problems, and self-centred, but not really concerned about others except as it relates to themselves. Just my impression. I follow a running forum too, and I can feel a difference. Of course there's a variation among people, but that was one of my first impressions, for better or worse.
The only other aspie I know personally is hard to be friends with because of that trait. She's totally unconcerned with anyone else except as it relates to her. Forget about a conversation; she's a talker, not a listener.

Ron

Like all of the symptoms, it'll vary in severity from person to person.

Me, for example, am of a moderate severity in regards to a "spectrum", and I have zero empathy. Just as I have zero eye contact.

E: I'd also like to add, "NTs" can actually lack empathy in regards to an individual with an ASD. I've witnessed it many, many times growing up, people not understanding my emotional state due to them being unable to read me, or me not responding how they normally expect [and taking it the wrong way by assuming that more was said other than the literal meaning].

I have experienced something similar.

Maybe it's just as simple as this:
All kinds of persons have difficulties understanding persons who are different from themselves, it's just more evident in us people with ASD, because we are the minority and hence have difficulty understanding most people, while the NTs are able to understand the majority?

i can not revisit where i never visited before

I totally disagree with you there. My impression was the exact opposite.

I think us Aspies can certainly experience empathy. We simply express it differently (or sometimes not at all). For instance, one might feel empathy if someone else is experiencing pain because one can imagine him/herself in that same situation. Someone without the capability of experiencing empathy would be therefore incapable of putting him/herself in that person's shoes, so to speak. The problem with Asperger's is that it might seem that one doesn't experience empathy, when one is unable to commiserate with someone else or communicate with them or comfort them effectively. But this, as you can see, doesn't mean that no emotion was or can be felt on the part of the person struggling to effectively communicate emotion in a way that others can easily understand.