Egocentricity: do you empathize with fictional characters?

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I was recently having a conversation with a friend about how a particular TV show is very stressful for me to watch. The main character is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and after watching an episode I feel depressed for the rest of the day as if I had a terminal illness. I go about my day with the thought that I have this disease in the back of my head. If an episode ends on a sad note, I will myself be very depressed for several hours at least. If something good happens, I will be happy.

I notice that this also happens to me with any movie I watch or book I read. I put myself in the shoes of the characters, and experience the emotions that I think I would feel if I were there.

Does anyone else experience this phenomenon? I'm wondering if it's related to autism and the egocentricity that tends to go with it, or if it just happens to me because I watch very little TV and am perhaps not desensitized to it.

For me, it's entirely dependent on who that character is. I've seen many episodes of House for example, where the patient who is sick/dying has done something that makes them incredibly douchey, and House calls them out on it.

The whole point of fiction is to allow you to experience the protagonist's plight. Of course, fiction is not interesting unless something is happening, so there must always be some sort of conflict going on, whether it's between characters, or the internal struggle of an individual, or a character and an obstacle or threat, such as a disease.

Personally, I find that emotions for me, whether real and private or experienced vicariously through a book or movie tend to be, like every other experience in the life of an autistic, turned up to 11. Either I'm completely neutral, or I'm overwhelmed, there's very little in between. So I can be watching a TV show while walking on the treadmill and burst into tears over the plight of a character I'm barely familiar with on a show I don't particularly care for.

Sometimes, the oddest things affect me emotionally - someone on a stupid chat show will be recounting a pointless personal experience and suddenly I'm overwhelmed with a wave of nostalgia for my own childhood and it breaks my heart and sends me into a fit of emotion. If anyone saw it, they'd think I was quite mad.

Yes, I react more strongly to fictional characters on TV than I do to "real life" people. I can feel very sad about a TV show for a long time afterwards, and even obsess over what the character must have been thinking or feeling in a certain scene. I have to remind myself that it is not real and that I probably shouldn't be wasting time thinking so much about it, but I can't help it, especially if I relate very much to the character, like Bones. And especially if I have been watching several episodes back to back...even though I record all my shows, I try to watch them on a weekly schedule, because if I save them all up to watch at once then my emotional reactions can cause a lot of stress.

This is also why I can't watch TV when I am feeling ill or anxious. If there is a suspenseful scene I start to get too nervous.

No (and I'm NT).

When I watch, I can see things that are too unrealistic. I just can't suspend my disbelief enough. I get angry at the show for being fake and I turn it off.

Or I do feel emotions that I don't want to feel and I turn it off.

I wonder if I don't focus more closely on characters in shows that I do on people in real life, at least most of the time. When I watch a movie or a show, I tend to focus entirely on the show, but when I interact with a person, a lot of other things may make demands on my attention. The lack of feedback in a show may also make a difference, in that I feel more able to let go without worrying about the character's reaction. When someone tells a sad story to me directly, I often feel like they expect a certain kind of reaction from me, and I don't want them to see me as a heartless jerk or whatever. This kind of inhibits my responses.

Very interesting question!

I've found that it's easier to get emotionally involved in the stories of fictional characters and people I don't know than it is for people I actually know.

I also don't criticize as I'm watching; i just enjoy the story as I go along, and then I'll think about it and process it.

No. I never feel emotion from watching TV shows. Nobody gets empathy from me, fictional or otherwise.

It usually depends on the story for me. For example, one of my most favorite films is the original "Back to the Future". Even though I've seen it countless times, a part of me still cheers when George decks Biff. I also love rock music, so the "Johnny B. Goode" sequence lifts my spirits.

I do really feel for my favorite characters in movies and TV, especially the animated characters....for me animated characters just seem more vivid, more "real" than human beings do. I think it's because whereas human beings can have somewhat subtle facial expressions, give off more subtle verbal/nonverbal cues than cartoon characters do, it's always been easier for me to identify right away what an animated character is thinking or feeling:

Le me watching Where the Wild Things Are: "Wow, Carol looked really unhappy after Judith and Max finished fighting....I bet he feels like it was his fault for making her mad at him" or "Max just sat down next to Alexander, and Alex sort of scooched away and turned his head, and he looks kinda p!ssed, too....I bet he's still mad at Max over the dirt-clod debacle"....you get the idea.

....If all this was taking place b/tw two live-action actors in a live-action or reality-based TV show, or even in real life, it would be a bit more difficult to tell what was going on with them, or it might just go right over my head. I've actually cried way more at certain parts in animated movies like Watership Down, Dumbo, Finding Nemo, etc than I have at sad parts in live action movies and TV shows. I do cry at parts of live-action movies and TV shows if something about the sadness reminds me of a bad experience I had/triggers something in me, though.

Yes, well, at least sometimes. I think I've grown at bit desensitized, but as a child it greatly disturbed me when things were WRONG for the characters. I still sometimes cry at movies.

Only when it's a character or a situation they're in that I can relate to. I sometimes have dreams about my own made up characters being treated horribly and screwed by life no matter what they tried, the world basically just hated them for no reason.

Not really.
The only reason why I watch certain TV shows is that I find them entertaining or interesting. Sometimes I feel sad if an animal in them dies though.
And I feel no empathy for cartoons and anime A friend in the past has told me that it's bad that I feel nothing for fictional characters, but I don't see the reason why. They don't even exist. Why should I love/hate/empathize with them? Why am I considered weird for not falling in love with a fictional character and evil for not empathizing with them? People's logic just looks like utter bullsh*t in this case to me.
There are characters I like and I have my "favourite characters", but I don't see why other people, when their favourite character gets hurt or dies, are sad or even cry. I don't do that and don't see why I am told I am evil because of it. I just think "cr*p, the show is gonna get more boring now".
Fictional characters are just the mask of the real-existing people, just with purple hair/red eyes/weird superpowers. Unless it's a realistic show of course. In that case they are just like real-life people.