Do you get sad when people die?

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I get teary eyed when someone dies in a movie, but don't get sad when someone dies in real life.

Yes, but it depends on who it is. I frequently get upset over even news stories of people dying.

You likely can feel sad during movies because the situation is really obvious and understandable. It's clear how the characters are feeling, and you usually get to almost experience death with them. You know their pain. There are views into the lives of multiple characters.

In real life, one usually just hears about someone dying. We aren't usually there, we don't know the experiences of that person during his/her last moments, and we don't see all of the different feelings of the other people involved. Unless we are there, or very close to the person, we aren't really involved. I'm guessing most NTs are able to guess what it's like for people and feel emotions.

Sometimes I have to ponder things before I feel empathy, because the situation doesn't really register for me. I can't imagine what it's like for others, so I don't understand, and don't feel empathy. Once I am able to grasp things, and imagine what it may be like for another, then I do feel empathy.

Also I have very strong emotional empathy. If I see another person upset/happy/etc, I tend to feel their emotions automatically.

So my guess is that your emotional empathy works, but your cognitive empathy, which is based on theory of mind and imagination, does not work so well.

* Spoiler for a video game Never Alone *



* Spoiler for The Force Awakens *



I guess I like dogs over men

It seems to be a declining thing for me. When my great grandmother died I was very sad about it and I cried a lot. When my uncle (who was living with my immediate family at the time) died I didn't cry until I was at the funeral, and even then it wasn't much. When my great grandfather died I don't remember crying at all, although I did feel sad.

I find that if the death was somewhat expected, then it doesn't hurt as bad when the death actually occurs. For example, if someone has diagnosed terminal cancer, I have time to emotionally prepare myself for the moment when they pass away. Most of the grieving has been done long before the death actually happens.

However, if the death is completely unexpected (random car crash, accident, or some other unnatural cause) then the emotions hit much harder.

Movies: yes, unless it's a villain. Like don't bring beers, bring a box of tissues if you drop by to watch the movie. Other stuff than death can be worse...

Real life, rarely right away. Whether expected or not it's always a rush of blood, everything stops, time flutters, and although profoundly felt, it's impossible for me to react, or connect with others then. Usually a couple of hours is enough, but it can be a couple of days. Occasionally more.

No one really close to me has died, but whenever I hear about someone who's died, I don't cry but I do still feel sad on the inside. Like when I heard a friend of my stepdad's had cancer, and I didn't think he would die just because he was someone I knew and who seemed happy, so it was a shock to hear that he had died. I didn't cry, but I still felt sad. I was only about 9 or 10, and looking back now, even though I didn't know him that well, I was sad because I realised that not even people you know and have met before are safe, and that it can be possible that you will never see or hear from them again.

I wasn't too upset when my Great Gran on my Mum's side of the family died because we all knew she was going to, but the only reason I ever saw her was because she was dying, and it did feel strange to know I'd never see her again. My other Great Gran, on my Dad's side of the family, died last year. I was a bit sad when I found out, but not too much because I thought it was her time. She was very small and frail, and I think she died of an illness because of that. I think she also had Alzheimers (Or however you spell it), which may have also caused it. What I found sad about it was that I hadn't seen her very often, I think the last time I ever saw her was at my Dad's wedding back in December 2014. I was too busy with a clingy boyfriend to be worried about her, and I was actually on the phone when I found out. My stepmother asked me if I'd heard about her, and I was like "No, did she die?" I wasn't really that surprised, but I still felt something. I decided to go to the funeral just to give her my last respects even if she would never know it. I think I'm her only great granchild. I also felt sorry for my Gran, who had always been visiting and looking after her mother. I think that even though she often complained about it, she missed seeing her. And now I'm never going to see her again.

If anyone really close to me died, I think I would be very upset enough to cry. Hopefully that won't happen anytime soon, but it will happen eventually.

This is very much how I am on the subject. I remember for years I thought death just didn't impact me. Both my grandparents died and I had to really focus on it to cry so I could feel like I was normal. I remember just fixating on how they weren't gonna be there and it's forever etc., and it worked, but barely. Then my wife's grandfather died and she was a mess because she was really, really close with him. That was tough time in my marriage because I was pretty cold about it because I just couldn't understand why someone would get so sad at a grandparent.

Then I realized it was more because I have only formed meaningful bonds with handful of people over the entirety of my life. I realized this when my best friends father died suddenly. That man meant so much to me because he was the closest thing I ever had to a father. And years later it still hurts. Alot. I can't think of it, or him, without tearing up. And I'm not typically that sort of guy. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I'm just usually not like that.

My point is, I couldn't really get sad about people dying until I knew what that feeling was like. I too am deeply empathetic when I can relate to the situation. I find myself very empathetic for a large portion of the people on this site, for example. The confusion. The frustration. The loneliness and alienation. Yet on the other hand, I am so totally and completely cold and callous about people who "don't matter" to me. Those are the people that I can't identify with at all. I couldn't care less if the die, are hurting, suffer or whatever. Until they become "real" to me.

I generally feel nothing unless there is direct involvement with me.

I need never got sad when my relatives died because I didn't have a relationship with any of them. I hardly ever saw them. I bawled my eyes out when my best friend's mother died and when an older woman I was friends with died. I cried when my cats died. I was very sad when my favorite celebrities and wrestlers died such as Robin Williams , Eddie Guerrero, Roddy Piper, and Steve Irwin. It probably seems weird that I would be more emotional over the deaths of celebrities than my relatives. I feel like I saw more of the celebrities on TV than I did of my relatives in my everyday life.

I'm afraid it has no real emotional impact on me.
I tend to just be interested in how they died, what happened and stuff like that.
I feel bad about it and sorry for others, but I don't really get sad or cry or anything like that.

I had a job where the boss was a jerk to everybody. He died of a heart attack in the parking lot, at work. I felt great that day but eventually I had to hide my smiles because everybody was crying about it. They all hated him too but when he dropped dead, I was the only one laughing.

The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that it took me a long time after getting sober to get in touch with and sort out feelings, especially grief, which I was carrying around a lot of for various reasons. Now I'm much more able to cry, and I generally see it as a good thing, because if the feelings are there, there's not much sense in my trying to pretend otherwise. And I am often touched quite deeply by death, even if it's not someone close to me.

No.

I do at first and I cry as well. I start to feel better after a while.

It depends. If it was a person that I actually liked, admired, respected, and felt that had a lot of positive traits, then I will be sad when they die. If it was some "celebrity" that I never cared one fragment about when they were alive, but the rest of the world practically stops to mourn them and it's on every talk show and news channel
every two minutes, then I feel nothing but disgust and annoyance, both for the corpse and for the living making an huge deal about it.