My view on the empathy thing...

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NTs have empathy for NTs.

Aspies have empathy for aspies.

If aspies were the majority, NTs would be seen as the ones with no empathy.

When do you have empathy while looking like you don't have any? It's when you empathize with the detrimental actions and behaviours of others and this happens all the time. People have so much empathy, they empathize with the misguided actions of others. They think: we have to understand why that person did what they did then they follow it up with a degree of pity for the person suffering the fate of such actions.
Now, this is where I don't have much empathy. I have no desire to know why people do certain things. It doesn't matter to me why they do it, just that I wish they didn't. It confounds me when people want to understand people who do crazy things. One thing others have noticed about me, I don't have much empathy for people who have done me wrong. One therapist tried to get me to be empathetic and forgiving but I failed to understand why I should have empathy for people who want to do rotten things. I couldn't get why I should have the empathy when it isn't deserved. The idea is, if you have empathy for them, you can have empathy for yourself. It's supposed to increase your self esteem but I'm not buying it.

People think I don't have empathy, but I do, I just don't like giving empathy for stupid things.
'Am I fat?', I won't say no or yes. I'll probably say, 'If you think you're fat, my opinion probably won't make a difference anyway', or something. I find vain statements like that a way of getting praise and refuse to participate in them.
If someone says to me, 'Don't you think my work's rubbish?' I'll probably say, 'I don't know...', as opposed to being plain rude and giving them the real answer.
If someone feels suicidal, and I know they don't have a reputation for it, THEN I will show empathy, if I feel I have the right to(if I don't know the person well, I'm not going to get involved in something and start making assumption).
If someone's going through a break up, and of course, I know them well, I'll show empathy.
I'm not going to show empathy to people I don't know, I don't know anything about them, I can't relate, I can't emphasize.
If I can relate better to an Aspie, then I will probably be able to emphasize better with them.
If I can relate to an NT better, then I will probably be able to emphasize better with them.
Encase the disclaimer hasn't already established, I feel fake and patronizing when I start to emphasize with people 'I don't know'(as in, don't talk to them regularly).
I relate better with Aspies, so I will probably be able to show empathy a bit better, but it's not really a question of Aspie or NT, for me.
Hope this makes sense and wasn't that repetitive .
EMZ=]

Being willing to be a part of a mob isn't real empathy.

I remember having to contribute to a very soppy group assignment on the "definition of love" at school.

I said that different people experience love in different ways and that there were "different flavours" of love and empathising with people. I said that everyone was an individual person so must therefore experience, express and relate to strong emotions in different ways.

I also said that relationships and empathy were like economic contracts. If one person believes that they cannot get what s/he wants, s/he will leave.
My ideas were pooh poohed and ignored by other people in the group at the time though.

I've been recently been reading up on social psychology recently and it seems that these economic bargaining ideas of relating and individual social "frames of reference" are pretty close to the truth!

I totally agree.

And that may be the answer to what I've asked myself for a long time: "What is the difference between what they call "autistic lack of empathy", and the fact that NTs not always use the empathy they are supposed to have?" (as I've seen many times).

(But I think it's possible for both groups to practice having empathy with people from the other group - at least cognitively - but sometimes it may require a little more practice to some.)

Here's something interesting to consider. Psychiatrists used to consider a lack of empathy for a patient when diagnosing Schizophrenia. Psychiatrists used their intuition and the "Schizophrenia feeling" about a patient in determining if that was what their patient had. Doctors thought if they completely failed to empathize with a patient, it meant the patient had Schizophrenia. Nowadays, it's not considered completely reliable and certainly isn't diagnostic criteria.
But, what if the same could be said for people with AS? What if it's the diagnostician's failure to empathize? Maybe those doctors were onto something, they realized something about human intuition and neurological differences? Maybe it's a failure to empathize on behalf of the person with Schizophrenia or AS (thought to involve the same halpotypes in the DNA) and NTs pick up on this using their intuition. It would explain why NTs appear to lack empathy for us.

For me, I don't know that it makes a difference whether the person is AS or NT. But, I can be slow to empathize if I don't completely comprehend the situation. Once I have thought the problem through, I empathize strongly. But, I think that my initial reactions can strike some people as cold.

I'm an aspie and I have empathy to not only to Aspies but I have empathy to NTs. I don't think of people as Aspies or NTs I think of them as People. Teenagers on the other hand... I hate. Even though I myself am only 14.

But anyways about the empathy thing.
I freaking feel empathy for the villains in movies. To EVERYONE.

That was exactly my view back when i was a noob in 2006. I wonder if i ever posted it here.

But then i felt empathy... oh was it something else.

I now call it the "colorblind effect".

This is the "colorblind effect": Colorblind people see things as shades of gray, kind of how we see things at night. However, they grow up hearing words like "blue", "red", "green" while people point to certain objects, and so they learn that certain shade of gray is called blue, another shade is called red, another shade is called green. And they grow up thinking they know the colors, unaware of what colorblindness is, unaware of what colors really look like.

This is the colorblind effect: if you ask a colorblind person if they have seen the color blue they will say yes, and they will even be able to point to blue objects... but they haven't really. Same thing with aspies, they think they have empathy because they've heard the word and linked it to whatever they were feeling at the time... but they haven't really felt it.

Of course the subject becomes complex when you add the missdiagnosed aspies to the question, because they have a diagnosis and they really have felt empathy and so they can rightfully claim that aspies do have empathy.

Some of the posts here make me think about the fine line between empathy and sympathy.

In my view, empathy is less conscious and deliberate - people might show a degree of empathy with

because a part of them feels they could do the same, given the circumstances, or identify up to a point to their motivations.

Sympathy on the other hand implies a dose of approval and acceptance - we usually sympathize with an act or position that we see as legit or worthy.

For example, I have no empathy for a very social people, because I don't share their feelings and needs, but I can have sympathy because I can imagine how unbearable loneliness must be to them.

Or I could feel empathy for someone who wants to kill a pedophile - because sometimes I feel the same - even if I don't see murder as acceptable.

So in a way I agree with the OP - it's natural to have empathy for those who share your feelings and thoughts, but this can also happen between aspies and NTs.

*As for understanding, for me this has very little to with either empathy or sympathy. I try to understand people's motivations because I'm curious and I want to know how their mind works. Understanding doesn't necessarily bring acceptance. But, alas, a lot of people can't make the distinction between their thoughts and feelings and they end up pleading for the "wrong guy"*.

i do not feel much (if any) empathy with any person.

i define 3 states that i think many people confuse.

1. identification.
2. sympathy.
3. empathy.

1. i can identify with someone after they tell me exactly what they think. like i can identify with how people like to care for innocent animals.

2. i can feel sorry for someone. if they are sad and honest, i can feel like i would want to do what i can to make them happier.

3. empathy is feeling like another person feels while the other person is doing or thinking something. it comes from mirror neurons which are responsible for imitating in your own mind, the actual thoughts and emotions of others in real time. i am almost blind to what another person is presently thinking or feeling.
i know when a person is crying that they are sad, but i do not "feel" it with them.