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Well.. when the other person starts giving short answers to the questions, that is a signal that he wants to stop talking, and then it's time to start ending the conversation. This also means that when you start answering with short answers they will know you want to end the conversation. One short answer doesn't always mean that, like in yes/no questions ofcourse. Short answers can also mean the person doesn't want to talk about a specific subject, but that's more likely when that is a logical subject (a pilot not wanting to talk about planes is "a bit" rare, for example. not a very good example though). An NT would know it better, I think.

Ok I see what you mean. I misunderstood.

Yes. If somebody says something to me meant to be reassuring, I do need for it to be true. I know this sounds odd after all the talk about NTs liking white lies. But in this particular case, it isn't really a white lie because it isn't meant to benefit the person being lied to, (like, "no- the dinner tastes fine"). It's meant to make them complacent when they should be on guard. An "I love you" from somebody who does not is a bad thing. It's also a cliche: "hey baby, you know I love you" says the man who does not but does want sex and will say any old thing to get it. An "I love you" that seems to come too easily from a new boyfriend and feels insincere just puts me on my guard that I'm about to get used.

A "sorry" from somebody who isn't sorry at all? It means nothing to me except as a warning that I need to be on my guard because this person will absolutely do it again, given a chance.

The insincere sorry gets talked about a lot in the media because of all the famous people who do it. The press has dubbed it "the apology tour" when a famous person makes a public announcement in multiple venues about how sorry they are that they slept around/took bribes/drove drunk and swore at a cop/said something vile and mean into a microphone on a stage etc. People have gotten so used to the insincere sorry that it might even have backfired into making genuine apologies harder because people have become so jaded by the fake ones.

I totally use the make-someone-laugh method of negating anger high five.

What I meant was when someone is sad. Like you, I freeze, my mind goes blank... I feel so utterly awkward and have no idea what to do/say to calm someone down/comfort someone who's sad

Regarding this empathy thing, I'd really like to learn what WP members think. I'm posting here and not below because this topic is welcoming to NTs and I do not want to evoke negative feelings in anyone.

First of all, I think part of the problem has to do with confusion over the definitions of empathy, sympathy, and compassion. I've looked up the definitions in several dictionaries and there is a lot of overlap, so I am using the word "empathy" in the broadest sense.

Isn't empathy a matter of using your imagination to imagine how someone else feels? As in, "I can imagine how you feel." I believe everyone is born with an imagination, and therefore I find it hard to believe that anyone could be born without the ability to emapathize via imagination, so please let me know if I am wrong. Basically, couldn't everyone empathize with others if they so chose?

Isn't the real challenge in expressing one's feelings and communicating, and not necessarily the ability (or inability) to empathize?

And one step further, isn't the issue whether you chose to empathize or not? I can understand why some people may not give a rat's behind about any other people, but isn't this more of a choice rather than an ability or inability to empathize? I guess the most direct question is: Do you have the ability to empathize if you so chose?

Understanding this is very important to me, and I really appreciate that there is an open forum where I can ask these types of questions.

yes, i think so; but to someone who is impaired in the body language / emotional subtext department, it could be impossible to determine that someone requires empathy in the first place. if that's determined, and one can also figure out what the right thing to do or say is, the sentiment is true. it's just going to look different than you would expect it to.



something like that.

and the emotion is there, and is genuine, but can be buried by logic.

does that make sense?

we are all the same inside. we all need to be understood. and we all care about one another. we are just speaking different languages.

very good question, dave. I hope I've helped?

I think that is a shallow definition of empathy. I've gotten some serious s**t in the past for not genuinely "feeling bad" (whatever that means) when natural disasters strike, people are murdered, planes crash, etc... I can imagine putting myself in that situation (I can pretend someone I know was on a plane that crashed, for example) but it still doesn't effect me in the way that it seems to effect everyone else.
Either that, or everyone else is faking when they gasp and say "oh, how horrible!" and make such a big fuss. I can respond that way, but never with as much...vigor...as the other people around me. I don't understand why they care so much. It just doesn't make sense to me.



I had an ex-boyfriend who genuinely couldn't, though I'm pretty sure he's a sociopath...
It's hard to describe, but when confronted with it, one can honestly tell the difference between someone who can deduce empathy through rational thought and someone who can't even figure out why what they did is wrong.

This was very insightful:

This makes perfect sense:



This I have felt for sometime, and its really great to hear (read) someone else say it:





Many thanks, katzefrau, you have been very helpful and I really appreciate your response

I think this has more to do with life experience and maturity. These things would probably affect you more if you had actually experienced them then if you just imagined experiencing them. Which actually brings up another point about empathy that I've been thinking about. It is one thing to be able to imagine how someone else feels, and I believe everyone has that capacity (see above), but it is another thing entirely to know how someone else actually feels unless you've already felt that at some point in your past. For example, lets say you are watching your friend grieve the loss of a parent. If you've never lost a parent, you can imagine how they may feel and can then make a choice about how to act, react, or not act, and it may feel somewhat shallow because you have not been there and done that. However, if you have lost a parent, then you really know, or have a basis to very closely know, exactly how your friend feels and this may inspire a more genuine or different reaction to the empathy and how you would deal with your friend. So as one ages, their library of life experiences grows larger, and the meaning behind the empathetic reaction grows more profound. Maybe this is what people mean when they say "I can relate." I'm just sort of writing this as I think it.



Yes, I think a lot of people fake it for a variety of reasons. Thanks very much for you reply, these types of conversations really help

i want to point out that considerateness and empathy are not the same thing. i live in an apartment building where the walls are thin: i know i shouldn't come home drunk at 4 a.m. on a weeknight and play really loud music, but my next door neighbor, as NT as anyone could get (and when i run into her, generally a pretty pleasant person) does not.

you know, i'm really confused about this stuff too. i've never thought of myself as someone who lacks empathy (i am an ethical vegetarian, for example), yet i find myself sometimes avoiding friends that are going through something rough, feeling like they're faking for attention. and when someone teases me for being too serious about something, i want to deck them. don't they know i do actually have a sense of humor??? i just don't like what they just said!!

I took an online empathizing quotient test that someone had posted in another thread:
http://eqsq.com/eq-sq-tests/

.. and the results totally stunned me:
empathizing quotient 14 (average woman: 48; average man: 39)
systemizing quotient: 88 (average woman: 51; average man: 61)

result: "extreme systemizing"
(of women in the control group, zero percent scored as extreme systemizers)

if someone could explain to me why i feel like one thing on the inside and obviously seem like something else entirely on the outside, that would be great.

but there doesn't seem to be anything written about asperger's and emotion, or really anything written about asperger's and adulthood. almost all the books are for parents and educators, and it seems to me the idea is not to truly empathize with it at all, but identify it from the outside and manage someone else's behavior so that it's less disruptive.

this i find ironic.

Totally agree. IMHO, to be considerate of others is a learned behavior that is typically taught (or not) in the home by parents. I cannot stand people who act inconsiderate of others, and avoid them at all costs.



Me too. I think it has to do with the amount of energy needed to empathize and socialize, and sometimes I just do not have enough "emotional energy" to help other people deal with life's troubles. Earlier in this thread, or maybe elsewhere on the site I can't remember where, there was discussed the concept of a "social battery." The concept is that everyone has a social battery with a finite capacity that can run down in time, say over a day, and needs to be recharged by sleeping or alone time or other calming activities. Carrying this further, there is probably a spectrum of social battery capacity, where some people's social batteries are more limited than others. Anyway, it is a complex topic and I have not seen a definitive explanation. Thanks again for sharing

this is exactly where i get confused. having to learn consideration - to me that shows a *lack* of empathy. i would think one would follow the other. if you can imagine how someone else might respond to your behavior, you'd take that into consideration all the time, wouldn't you? if not, that screams deliberate selfishness to me, not necessarily bad parenting. where it frustrates people that aspies have trouble with empathizing emotionally (or behaviorally??), i am frustrated by the NT inability to empathize logically. and since logic makes more sense, of course, i always think i'm right.

point being: to me NTs are the ones who lack empathy. it's a matter of perspective.

so maybe the real definition of empathy is being able to figure out what someone else needs, and maybe no one is really good at that, except with people like themselves.

< (and i love that the shortcut for a confused smiley is colon / question mark.)

I just wanted clarify this:

What I meant was, I cannot stand people who intentionally act inconsiderate of others, such as people who cut you off while driving.

Regarding this:



To me, empathy and being considerate are entirely different things. Empathy in the broadest sense is knowing or imagining how someone else feels, and I view this as separate from being considerate. So emapthy is how you feel or imagine someone else feels, while being considerate is how you chose to act. At least, that's how I see the world (for now )

I think being considerate basically comes down to following a list of social rules like always say please and thank you, say gahbleshew when someone sneezes, walk on the right side of the hallway, hold the door open for someone who is behind you, say "excuse me" when you accidentally bump into someone, use your turn signal when driving or riding a bicycle, etc. The list goes on, and the basics were taught to me by my parents. The list evolves in time, and may be different from culture to culture, but I think almost everyone has the capacity to learn on an intellectual level a list of behaviors that would add up to "being considerate."



You and me both. I find human beings in general to be a very illogical species...keeps things, um, interesting.



I don't think anybody is born without the capacity to empathize via imagination, but I would agree if the point was that some or even most NTs chose not to use empathy.

I think it can be difficult to imagine how someone else might be feeling when the way they feel is different from how I would feel in the same situation.

For instance, if I was walking down the street and saw someone I knew slightly, I would dread having to stop and chat with them, so I would be grateful if they were to cross the street to avoid me, but if I did the same to them, most people would think it was very rude and might have their feelings hurt. That's an easy example. Most situations are not so straightforward.

It's hard for me to tell, for instance, if someone who is in distress would rather be comforted or left alone. I think the difference is that your average NT would be able to pick up on whatever cues the person was giving off. Not only would I not know what they wanted, but if I somehow knew they would want me to talk to them, I wouldn't know what to say, or I might feel to overwhelmed to be able to offer any support, and I would withdraw regardless.

Hi bee33, thanks for replying to my question. Is the act of imagining difficult for you? Or is getting it correct that's difficult? I ask this because, for me, imagining stuff is easy, its the getting it correct part that is difficult, see below.



Its hard for me to tell the difference too, and I'm pretty sure I fall on the NT side of things, though I do not think I am an average NT. I consider myself to be an atypical neurotypical (ANT). I've been wrong about this specific example (picking up on cues about a person preferring to be comforted or left alone) plenty of times and the ironic thing is that the closer I am to a person, the wronger I tend to bee. Anyway, I appreciate your insight

same here, and i err on the side of distance because i can prefer that, and it's preferable to making someone more uncomfortable; but I suspect now, after years of failing to getting to know people better that in some cases i wished i had, that i've probably given people "space" when they really needed reassurance. if someone does not return a phone call right away, i assume it's because i should not have called.

i wish everyone came with closed captioning, and in addition to the text of their speech there was some sort of icon indicating what behavior they would appreciate in response.



< that means "cool," Dave.

Thanks katzefrau