Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Once more, for the people in the back: yes, autistic people do have empathy. Today's article is one more study showing this fact. The researchers used imaginary scenarios written in text, quizzing both autistic and neurotypical adults on how the characters were likely to be feeling in the stories. To my complete lack of surprise, the autistic adults scored equally, sometimes better, than their neurotypical peers.
The idea that autistic people don't have empathy was one I heard relatively soon after my diagnosis. I was, um... not impressed, with the idea. The originator seems to be the researcher Simon Baren-Cohen, whose work includes such gems as autism being an "extreme male brain" issue, and this idea of "mind blindness," or lack of empathy. Perhaps you can guess I'm not terribly thrilled with his line of work or his assumptions.
I ran across this article, which discusses the author's theory of two categories of empathy. I'm inclined to say their impression, that autistic people might have difficulty with shallow empathy but be entirely unhindered in deep empathy, might be about right. But not for the reasons Baren-Cohen or possibly even this author, think.
Assume, for a moment, that you go to visit another culture. You see people doing things according to their customs, but you have no idea what those customs are. You see people being happy or sad, but because you don't understand the context, you only see their emotions. Would you score terribly well on a test asking you to explain why those people are happy or sad?
This, I think, is why autistic adults can and often do display high amounts of altruistic behavior, compassion, and concern for others... yet can be accused of being tactless or thoughtless. It's not that we don't have the shallow empathy or somehow lack the capacity to have it, it's that we're naturally very very different in our thought processes.
Humans tend to treat other people with the assumption that they're just like us. For neurotypical people, that can be a safe assumption. For autistic people, it often isn't. An autistic person, when asking if their clothes look good, may desire an honest answer. A neurotypical person, asking the question, may have already decided they look good and just desires agreement or is fishing for compliments. If either person gives the other their personally desired response, hurt feelings and misunderstandings may occur.
This is complicated by the fact that autistic people may have face-blindness or simply difficulty processing faces, postures, and other emotional "tells." So a neurotypical person may be clearly projecting their sadness, anger, or pain, but due to missing those cues, the autistic person may not recognize that emotional state, and therefore cause further upset. Again, not from lack of empathy or ability to empathize, but because of the difficulty in perceptual processing.
Another complication is personal suffering. Autistic people have higher rates of depression, anxiety, sensory sensitivities, chronic pain, epilepsy, and other life-complications than neurotypical people. If you're already struggling to make it through life, you're going to have a harder time noticing or doing anything about other peoples' emotions. That's true for any person, anywhere.
Personally? I found out in the last two years that one of my friends from college had assumed I had no empathy, right up to the day she told me. That was both flabbergasting and kind of hurtful. I had done many empathy-spurred actions in her presence, during college and afterwards. I wasn't the most in-tune, thoughtful friend in college, but I did and still do have a functioning empathy sense. I took actions to ease the lives of the people around me. If someone near me was sad or anxious, I noted it and, if I couldn't help, at least I tried not to make it worse.
But that friend, she spent at least 7 years believing I had no empathy. She is neither stupid nor evil. She's actually a pretty cool, fun, interesting person, and having that belief was really out of character for her. But that's the power of authorities saying "autistic people don't have empathy." It makes people stop thinking.
I don't claim to be amazing at social interactions and emotional perception, but I will contend I have empathy 'til I'm blue in the face, thank you. I think my parents will agree, as would my spouse and my friends (including the mistaken one, now). And I think it's true for any autistic person. Some of us just have a harder time expressing it, or seeing opportunities to express it.
It's a tough world full of people that don't make sense. We are still fully human, though. Like one of those Intel stickers, each autistic person comes with a little invisible sticker that says "Empathy inside."
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
The idea that autistic people don't have empathy was one I heard relatively soon after my diagnosis. I was, um... not impressed, with the idea. The originator seems to be the researcher Simon Baren-Cohen, whose work includes such gems as autism being an "extreme male brain" issue, and this idea of "mind blindness," or lack of empathy. Perhaps you can guess I'm not terribly thrilled with his line of work or his assumptions.
I ran across this article, which discusses the author's theory of two categories of empathy. I'm inclined to say their impression, that autistic people might have difficulty with shallow empathy but be entirely unhindered in deep empathy, might be about right. But not for the reasons Baren-Cohen or possibly even this author, think.
Assume, for a moment, that you go to visit another culture. You see people doing things according to their customs, but you have no idea what those customs are. You see people being happy or sad, but because you don't understand the context, you only see their emotions. Would you score terribly well on a test asking you to explain why those people are happy or sad?
This, I think, is why autistic adults can and often do display high amounts of altruistic behavior, compassion, and concern for others... yet can be accused of being tactless or thoughtless. It's not that we don't have the shallow empathy or somehow lack the capacity to have it, it's that we're naturally very very different in our thought processes.
Humans tend to treat other people with the assumption that they're just like us. For neurotypical people, that can be a safe assumption. For autistic people, it often isn't. An autistic person, when asking if their clothes look good, may desire an honest answer. A neurotypical person, asking the question, may have already decided they look good and just desires agreement or is fishing for compliments. If either person gives the other their personally desired response, hurt feelings and misunderstandings may occur.
This is complicated by the fact that autistic people may have face-blindness or simply difficulty processing faces, postures, and other emotional "tells." So a neurotypical person may be clearly projecting their sadness, anger, or pain, but due to missing those cues, the autistic person may not recognize that emotional state, and therefore cause further upset. Again, not from lack of empathy or ability to empathize, but because of the difficulty in perceptual processing.
Another complication is personal suffering. Autistic people have higher rates of depression, anxiety, sensory sensitivities, chronic pain, epilepsy, and other life-complications than neurotypical people. If you're already struggling to make it through life, you're going to have a harder time noticing or doing anything about other peoples' emotions. That's true for any person, anywhere.
Personally? I found out in the last two years that one of my friends from college had assumed I had no empathy, right up to the day she told me. That was both flabbergasting and kind of hurtful. I had done many empathy-spurred actions in her presence, during college and afterwards. I wasn't the most in-tune, thoughtful friend in college, but I did and still do have a functioning empathy sense. I took actions to ease the lives of the people around me. If someone near me was sad or anxious, I noted it and, if I couldn't help, at least I tried not to make it worse.
But that friend, she spent at least 7 years believing I had no empathy. She is neither stupid nor evil. She's actually a pretty cool, fun, interesting person, and having that belief was really out of character for her. But that's the power of authorities saying "autistic people don't have empathy." It makes people stop thinking.
I don't claim to be amazing at social interactions and emotional perception, but I will contend I have empathy 'til I'm blue in the face, thank you. I think my parents will agree, as would my spouse and my friends (including the mistaken one, now). And I think it's true for any autistic person. Some of us just have a harder time expressing it, or seeing opportunities to express it.
It's a tough world full of people that don't make sense. We are still fully human, though. Like one of those Intel stickers, each autistic person comes with a little invisible sticker that says "Empathy inside."
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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