Empathy and ASD

[Clueless in Canada]

I am definitely no sociopath, not wily enough and I detest lying, hurting people's feelings and doing anything I know is immoral.[/QUOTE

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I can certainly relate to much of what you say though I do not avoid people regularly as far as I am aware. Or maybe I do. It's difficult to tell when I spend most of my time at home with only my partner.

 

[Nauti]

I spend most of my time at home, with my partner and/or son and we are all Aspieish and have learnt to communicate clearly with each other. I love the clarity of it!

 

[Clueless in Canada]

I spend most of my time at home, with my partner and/or son and we are all Aspieish and have learnt to communicate clearly with each other. I love the clarity of it!

My partner is aspieish although I don't think he is on the spectrum. So are both of my parents and I am certain my son is on the spectrum. They are the people I spend the most time with and feel completely at ease with. I think it might be accurate to say I generally couldn't be bothered to or am not interested in much socialising as opposed to actively avoiding it. I don't have to avoid it as my life isn't set up to present me with much of it. Probably I could have been more succinct in explaining that.

 

[Gracey]

I knew exactly what you meant

I’ve reduced my ‘world’ to a size I can manage.
I don’t have to avoid socialising because it doesn’t present itself much.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

I knew exactly what you meant

I’ve reduced my ‘world’ to a size I can manage.
I don’t have to avoid socialising because it doesn’t present itself much.

PHEW! It's always a relief to be understood.

 

[tree]

I struggle to understand emoticons almost as much as human faces. LOL

I see that happen in the Chat room.
People use them and then don't explain in words.

It can be confusing.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

I see that happen in the Chat room.
People use them and then don't explain in words.

It can be confusing.

I tend to under use them so probably give the impression I am unfriendly when I am not. Then sometimes I try to make up for it and feel as though I am just randomly throwing in smiley faces. I have observed that other females use xo or hearts and love signs just with their female friends so sometimes I imitate that but usually forget.

 

[Fino]

I use lots of exclamation points and emojis to keep from scaring people!

 

[RosaViolet]

Used to think I was truly great at understanding other people. Like a mind reader. In my family being able to know the state of mind of some, was connected to my ability to protect myself. It appears that I only get the surface stuff, basic emotion. The behavior and look on the face. What people say and what they actually mean.

Often I've decided I know what my spouse was thinking, by his behavior and the things he's said. Turns out I was wrong a good part of the time. And so was he about me. He assumes, I assume that we know. Both of us might understand basic emotions, myself more than him. Yet neither of us, know what the other is actually feeling or thinking. I can't seem to interpret that anymore. It's far too complex.

Could the double empathy gap be as good an explanation as the 'lack' of empathy ?

Tu put the cat among the pigeons, when people say that neurotypicals are good at decoding emotions and thoughts, how do we know they really are? They are not good at decoding autistic feelings and thoughts, are they? Do they really spend time analysing and naming their emotions? Some of them might enjoy this navel gazing, but I guess most do not. Maybe they are just more alike, have more shared experience, so they project, extrapolate their own feelings and predict more accurately?

Essentially I guess they react intuitively to achieve their goals and to feel better. They might know from experience if they do this thing, others are likely to do that thing, so they ill feel better as a result.

 

[Mia]

Could the double empathy gap be as good an explanation as the 'lack' of empathy ?

Hmm, it seems connected to reciprocity and mutuality in social interaction. Something that the endlessly quoted 'theory of mind' perceives as missing in autistic people.

I like your point that people cannot read us, much of the time. If other people are so good at empathy, then why don't they know what we are thinking? Why would scientists treat autistic individuals as lab rats to discover what they think of as a deficit of empathy?

From my own experiences with autistic friends, family, I see no lack of empathy in everyday life. It's simply not as overt and it depends where you are on the spectrum. Is attempting to understand people who exist in society but eschew society at the same time more a distinctive feature of control and subjugation? Our 'otherness' un-comprehensible?

 

[Pinkie B]

If only there were some way to know, like in a trivia game where they tell you the answers after...

I'm self diagnosed based mostly on identifying with what I've heard other people describe as their experience. When I took the Quotient and it says, "I find it easy to “read between the lines” when someone is talking to me." or "I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face." I'm all, "Um...well, I thought I was good at those things until one day I realized that I'm actually really bad at those things and that's why people always surprise-hate me!"

So, I don't know how you say if you're good or bad at reading other people's emotions especially when they never tell you if you're right or not! I guess if you're NT then you just know and don't need them to tell you and if you need them to tell you, that's proof that you don't know?

 

[Clueless in Canada]

[QUOTE I thought I was good at those things until one day I realized that I'm actually really bad at those things and that's why people always surprise-hate me!"

So, I don't know how you say if you're good or bad at reading other people's emotions especially when they never tell you if you're right or not! I guess if you're NT then you just know and don't need them to tell you and if you need them to tell you, that's proof that you don't know?[/QUOTE]

I agree completely and your term 'surprise-hate' is quite relevant to some of my experiences too. I think that when I have a partner I study them intently and learn to read them well and this might be misleading me into thinking I am good at reading people. I also think that I rely on behaviour patterns because I notice those and so if someone is continuing to behave in the same way but their facial expression has changed I might not be so good at noticing that.

 

[Pinkie B]

I got surprise-hated out of my church and almost out of my high school when I was a teenager. I'm just going along, doing my thing, thinking everything is fine and then my pastor was like, "Mrs. [Pink's Mom], we need to talk to you about the "issue of your daughter." She's become a point of contention in the group and we think it's best for everyone if she just found another church." I honestly had ZERO clue that A. any of this was going on and B. what on earth anyone was talking about. It was just SURPRISE! We HATE YOU!

We'd been members there for nearly 20 years. No matter. SURPRISE-HATE! Even Christians aren't immune...Orz (Yeah, 20 (more) years later I'm still sore about that. Justice? Not a thing)

 

[Khendra]

I have normal affective empathy, but not much cognitive empathy. Affective empathy is responding appropriately to emotional stimuli in the moment, while cognitive empathy is the ability to take on someone else's perspective. I find it hard to take on someone else's perspective if it makes absolutely no sense to me, or it's something I've never gone through myself. So if they are, say, an outspoken feminist who hates and denounces the Abrahamic monotheistic faiths, I cannot relate to or take on their perspective (cognitive empathy) because I've never had issues with men or religion -- but if they've injured themselves physically, I can feel their pain (affective empathy).

 

[Progster]

Many NTs also struggle with cognitive empathy. My neurotypical(?) students get extremely confused when solving excercises with dialogues, where they need to be able to 'see' from another perspective to get the correct verb form and pronoun. Also, how can one really be able to see something from another person's perspective, if you have not experienced? For example, how can you know what it's like to be a soldier on duty in a war zone, or to be physically abuse by someone, if you have not experienced this yourself? I don't believe that this is truly possible for anyone. I smell a myth here.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Also, how can one really be able to see something from another person's perspective, if you have not experienced?

You pretend that you can.

Then you get a tick in the 'social empathy' box.

 

[Juliettaa]

The people I do feel sorry for, however, are the ones who edit Wikipedia. They have to go and change everything on that person's article to the past tense.

^^^^^ That is one of the funniest things I've ever read on this forum.

Thank you so much for making me laugh out loud

 

[Juliettaa]

surprise-hated

What does that mean?

 

[Progster]

You pretend that you can.

Then you get a tick in the 'social empathy' box.

Yes, this. We're back to ememes again.

 

[Khendra]

Many NTs also struggle with cognitive empathy. My neurotypical(?) students get extremely confused when solving excercises with dialogues, where they need to be able to 'see' from another perspective to get the correct verb form and pronoun. Also, how can one really be able to see something from another person's perspective, if you have not experienced? For example, how can you know what it's like to be a soldier on duty in a war zone, or to be physically abuse by someone, if you have not experienced this yourself? I don't believe that this is truly possible for anyone. I smell a myth here.

Great points. I've often wondered about the true ability of anyone to have cognitive empathy. I think it's an abstraction people would like to attain to, but can't actually do much in reality. I mean, if people were so good at it, we wouldn't have the massive political discord we have now, would we?