I don't quite understand: NT's and empathy/consideration

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It's frequently said that those of us with AS lack empathy and don't consider the feelings of others.

This is generally not true of course and in the few instances it is, it's usually because the person is a child, or in the rare situation, has managed to live quite a few years on this Earth without really comprehending that others have feelings like they do.

But when someone with AS is informed of these things or realizes these things, I've never known someone with AS to be intentionally inconsiderate.

However, I see intentional inconsideration exhibited rather frequently among NT's. I've seen NT's blatantly disregard others who have neither been hostile or inconsiderate to them, when it wouldn't have been any effort to act in a respectful or considerate manner.

I acknowledge this phenomena but I don't really understand why someone would act in such a manner and I don't see how such a person could be classified as a good person. Why would someone be intentionally inconsiderate when there was no need to be?

Social conditioning. People are inconsiderate because they have learned to be that way, for whatever reason.

It's not empathy but prospective taking that's the issue with Aspies. Here's my prospective on Aspies and the big "E" word: http://www.myaspergerslifestory.com/my_ ... rgers.html (please scroll to the bottom of the page)

From what I understand, empathy isn't just about recognizing others' emotions, but also feeling them. Also, with empathy, people are often aware of others' emotions without having to be told. Aspies can obviously care for the people around them, and are often considerate. The issue isn't that they don't care, it's that they often aren't aware of others' emotions without being explicitly told.

I had an interesting discussion with my wife and mother on this topic today actually. I had no idea that empathy didn't only have to do with negative emotions. Apparently, people have the same thing with happiness and excitement. They see someone else be happy or excited and immediately feel the same way. I'm glad I don't experience this, I don't think I could handle my emotions constantly being "hijacked" by whatever someone around me is experiencing.

I believe my brother-in-law has AS (undiagnosed and I'm sure he's oblivious), but his wife is definitely NT. He's said a lot of things over the years which have appeared a little tactless, but given that I think he has AS, I can understand it. I don't think he's been deliberately trying to hurt our feelings. It's not helped by the fact that my husband never tells him what he said wasn't nice (he has some AS traits and mild face blindness, but I think would be considered NT).

However, his wife says things which I believe are just downright nasty. Or more often, she insinuates something, without actually saying it outright - probably because she can then deny that's what she was actually meaning. Usually comments go unchallenged by us, so as not to cause an argument. But, last summer, I found myself midflow of an outburst aimed at them (I was just unable to stop myself) and I haven't seen them since.

From my observations, what we have is more of a one-way empathy - incoming feelings can hit us hard, but we don't have the knack of sharing them around.

Very nice contributions from everyone. But I suppose what I was trying to say was, I don't understand why some people are deliberately inconsiderate when it isn't an issue of massive inconvenience or bad habit.

For example, we had a gardener once who didn't like us for no particular reason....or at least that was the best we could conclude. I was always polite to him and would usually offer him a cold drink on hot days.

One year I decided to decorate for the holidays and tossed a net of lights over one of the bushes. It was winter and the bush was an oliander....they aren't very quick growers and rarely have to be trimmed. I went outside to plug the lights in one evening during the first week in January to find the bush didn't light up. When I went to investigate I found the gardener had proceeded to trim the bush with the lights on them, cutting right through all the wires. He knew the lights were on the bush but couldn't bother himself to take them off himself or knock on the door and ask me to remove him if he wanted to trim the bush so badly.

But this is an example of someone who obviously had some unknown hostilities towards my family I think.

A more common example would be people who can't seem to be bothered to flush or wipe off the toilet seat in a public bathroom. People who can't be bothered to say thank you when they know someone held the door for them, or people who don't bother to pick up a piece of mail that didn't quite make it into the mail box and mail it when the mail box is right there, and so on.

It's sometimes a matter of social status. If you're intentionally inconsiderate, you're communicating a higher social status and social status is constantly in the minds of many NTs, even if subconsciously.

There could also be other reasons, such as there are people who are naturally "mean".

Also, the empathy test I took said I had pretty good social insight, so you can probably trust me on that one.

The condensed version of this post would probably be something like "They think they're better than you or they're mean.".

Last edited by swbluto on 10 May 2011, 11:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

Interesting article, Allie. I agree that "lack of empathy" needs to be replaced.

Yeah, it probably should be better labeled "lack of apparent empathy." as having and effectively expressing empathy are two different things entirely. The shy withdrawn person may have a lot of empathy but isn't keen to show it, while the sociopath might seem to have a bit of empathy but is really just faking it.

A few weeks ago I had an epiphany with my wife around the empathy issue.

As it turns out, often she has a better idea of my emotional state than I do. My own assessment of my emotional state is highly filtered and based on I feel the way I say I feel. She sees a disconnect, and in the past I'd just get mad and tell her to just listen too me and stop telling my what my feelings are.

Makes sense that I would be the subject matter expert on my own feelings, doesn't it? It was quite a surprise to find out upon careful reflection and examination that she was right a lot of the time, and i was wrong. About my OWN feelings.

What I get annoyed with is this perception by some neurotypicals that "Aspergers is not an insult people for free card".

So it IS an insult people for free card ?, hehe