Simon Baron-Cohen: Aspergers Less Empathetic than Psycopaths

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I think that what a person does, and to a lesser extent, what he says, are much more important than how much empathy he has for others.

I hate he and his dual and stereotype-based point of view... His theory is sexist (Masculine - Logical and Rational; Feminine - Emotive and Intuitive), feelings are not the opposite of rationality, and a LOT of aspergers are more emotional than rational, too!

[quote="HimekoShirayuki"]I hate he and his dual and stereotype-based point of view... His theory is sexist (Masculine - Logical and Rational; Feminine - Emotive and Intuitive), feelings are not the opposite of rationality, and a LOT of aspergers are more emotional than rational, too![/quot]

Humans are empathetic within their identity group. That is why they polarize b/t black/white, gay/straight/ christian/muslim, neurotypical/neurodiverse, etc.

The NT researchers who think autistics do not have empathy (some of us have an over abundance - we're a spectrum) b/c they do not empathize with us. Who on this forum has not face unempathetic NTs?

I think stereotypes limiting and generally false, it's a way when peoples use to facilitate to understand what they don't know in the reality...

Possibly as more is learned about ASD, Baron-Cohen's models could be seen as limiting - but they were a start. The mindblindness stuff was helpful back in the 90s....

I have not read all the posts here so maybe someone has addressed this already. Also, Aspies are quite a varied lot, so maybe this is just me or just some other aspies. But I would like to make a comment about my experience of empathy and being an Aspie, as I know it.

Some time ago the writers for "The Simpson's" animated TV show gave Homer Simpson a rather interesting line that caused me to think.

Homer says,."Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand !".

Now that is a very appropriate line for a sociopath!

Now if we turn that around I think I could apply it to my own personal experience of Asperger's in myself.

As an Aspie, I can say, "Just because I don't understand, doesn't mean I don't care!".

For clarity:
Sociopath: ...."Just because I don't care, ...................doesn't mean I don't understand !"
Aspergers: .... "Just because I don't understand, ......doesn't mean I don't care!"

From my experience and reading of what other Aspies have written I think that reversed version says it accurately for Aspies such as myself.

I am pained that people think I do not have empathy, that I do not care for the troubles or trials that they are experiencing and that I feel no urge or responsibility to help them in their troubles. (So in that situation it is they that do not have empathy!)

The problem is that I do not grasp that the other person is troubled, or that what I am doing is troublesome to them. And when I do figure it out, it grieves me that I have added to their burden or pain or embarrassment.

I want to help out. I would far rather help someone and work to make things better for them or ease their grief. To me, that is the very essence of empathy. I would not wish to experience what they are experiencing, and I would wish to help them!

So it is that I find it offensive when someone, (a third party), says I am lacking in empathy, when in fact what I am lacking is the ability to see the need for empathy. I may not be showing empathy, but it is not because I do not want to, I simply do not know in many situations when it is needed. I object to being characterized as an uncaring monster, when what I am is impaired at sensing other people's emotions.

So I am confused, and offended when someone says to me, "What's the matter with you! Have you not feelings! Don't you care about others!"

I do care and I am deeply embarrassed to find that I have contributed to someone else's distress. If I were a sociopath I would not give a rip! I am a caring person, and I am concerned for the well being of others. It is for this reason that I would wish that others would cease to demean me and others aspies. I wish they would get this empathy vs. Aspergers thing straight. (And yes it is often people who know I have aspergers who berate me).

If the "experts" about Aspergers Syndrome have anything to say about Aspies and Empathy, I think they need to get this one straight. I think it would certainly help parents of Aspie's to know that their children are not deliberately being evil monsters, but need the situation better explained to them.

So then, does this have resonance with others who experience Aspergers syndrome or am I just that much more weird than others.

Regarding the "Sally" test used to prove that autistics are cognitively impaired and lack ToM resulting in decreased empathy...I recently heard the following info on Radiolab's "Words" eposode

In the early 1970s Nicaragua began a special ed program that included deaf children. As the deaf children spent time together, they developed a visual language. This language has been studied intensively by linguists Judy Kegl and R.J. Senghas.

While "Autism experts" have used these tests to demonstrate "Difficulty in understanding other minds is a core cognitive feature of autism spectrum conditions," linguists using similar tests see it as a language issue.

In a nut shell, the original deaf children developed a language that stressed action and used whole body, imitative gestures to communicate compared to Nicaraguan deaf children 20 years later - who used the more sophisticated gestures more commonly seen in ASL and more 'thought' vocabulary. Additionally, while the original children, now adults, were tested along side the children with the Sally like tests, failed while the children passed. Two years later, the adults passed the test following more exposure to the children's.

In autistics the Sally-like tests demonstrate a "core cognitive deficit" which provides evidence of reduced empathy. In the Nicaraguan Deaf culture it is considered a reversible language delay and this "phenomenon... one of the richest sources of data on language emergence discovered to date.

I wish more autistics could pursue becoming recognized "experts", but I suspect that since autism has become a lucrative business their contribution would be suppressed.

Please be aware that this use of the word empathy appears to be a very specific scientific definition of the word and is not truly relevant outside that scientific discipline regardless of similarities between the scientific definition and the common usage. In other words this is not the kind of "empathy" that I referred to. In the context you quote it is a scientific concept of inter human communication of information, not an emotional attribute of caring one for another.

I reread your post, Outlander. I think that you are believing the lies of the autism "experts" that set up the scenario that has caused you harm. The research by the linguists are offering you a different way to perceive yourself. Many of us actually suffer from too much empathy.

My point was that the autism "experts" subjectively chose a negative interpretation of the ToM research. The extent that their interpretation of the ToM research is subjective is highlighted by the positive interpretation made by the linguists for their group of subjects.

The autism "experts" chose an interpretation that supported ToM as a core cognitive deficit that cannot be reversed.

The linguists chose an interpretation that ToM is a language issue that can be reversed through increased exposure to vocabulary of "thought" words, and follow up two years later confirmed their interpretation.

Autism is defined by a communication delay and the gift of intense narrow interests. Some of us have additional sensory and dyspraxia issues that challenge personal independence. But while autism is a way of thinking that sets us apart from mainstream, we are not cognitively impaired or lack empathy. That is a lie

While I am unsure of what all you were getting at in the bulk of your post, I will give you an AMEN on this part of your conclusion.

I think my 13 years of work designing nuclear reactors, and my 24 years of teaching at 4 different universities (17 as a PhD professor of Mechanical Engineering) testify to that.

In spite of the abuse by bullies in primary and secondary schools and others in the workplace years later, I survived and thrived. Only as I was nearing retirement age did I finally hear about Asperger's Syndrome and finally find out why the social aspects of my life were so rugged.

As I have said elsewhere about my Aspergers, I would not trade my gifts for a cure. I have benefited in ways that I value from some of the positives that Asperger's brings, and those that were a burden were largely so as a result of the ignorance of neurotypicals, (who had no empathy for where I was coming from). I do wish I could have avoided the embarrassments resulting from not realizing when I was accidentally annoying others, but neurotypicals do many things that are annoying to me, (e.g. go drive on the highway with a bunch of neurotypicals).

My comments in this post are beliefs and impressions based on my six decades of experience being autistic and several decades as a speech language pathologist working with autistics, many of them the so called "low functioning" - who often who became my mentors.

I figured it out in my 40s. In my day, we were either institutionalized or had to hack it ITRW with no assistance. But I had a close to ideal* autistic childhood. I have always loved my brain and had little use for mainstream culture. I sadly believe that making the DSM the gatekeeper for IDEA has further dis-abled those born post 1972. We are not a pathology.

Those of us who have barriers to personal independence such as extreme sensory issues and/or dyspraxia (i.e. ideomotor, conceptual, or constructional as well as speech/oral motor dyspraxia: the so called "low fxing") demonstrate good cognition and unique ways of thinking once communication is appropriately accommodated. Oddly, sensoripraxia is rarely addressed in treatment due to the priority of controlling behavior in sensory aversive environments and forcing conformity to mainstream culture on the child.



You are a success; what's to cure? The socio-communication delays are simply delays - that resolve with enhanced immersion in language rich environments (for me: literature), but also buffers our ability to conform to the dominant culture at susceptible developmental stages, protecting our way of thinking as we develop. Our narrow, intense interests are truly a gift. Sadly, many of us feel bad about ourselves instead of reveling in our out of the box thinking style.

NTs are frequently ignorant and cruel, but often are simply naive helpers. They believe the more we conform to the dominant culture, the better for us. All marginalized cultures have dealt with this. It is worth studying the ways they have maintained or regained their unique identity. NTs are all about conforming to the dominant culture. We provide the needed balance of nonconformist thinking sparking ideas and creating art. This is not being nurtured for many of our youth, and they don't have the personal space to develop it individually in today's over-supervised culture. Depression in autistic teens and young adults is rampant, and this worries me.

I find all marginalized cultures have wisdom for us, but I have been especially interested in studying Deaf culture. They owned their "disability" by recognizing its gifts, developed a language, established a university, and formed a strong bond of community. The GLBT advocates not only developed a strong bond of community, but had their "pathology" removed from the DSM. African Americans/blacks fine tuned civil disobedience and experimented with violence - good lessons. Feminists have worked for a millennium for gender equality, but bashing them is still PC. Food for thought.



NTs are the file that shapes us, who don't break under their constant grinding, to become successful autistic thinkers and advocates. Forgive the bastards, but reject their lies that made you feel bad about yourself. You triumphed!

Let us take an anthropological look at the dominant NT culture: Statistically speaking, men are not empathetic with women, nor women with men; neither are blacks/whites; rich/poor, liberal/conservative, etc. So many groups are polarized by lack of empathy for each other. Then these "autism experts", who can only exhibit empathy within their small subculture, point their crooked "autism expert" fingers at us and tell the world we have reduced cognitive capacity for empathy.

Which one of those "autism experts" have shown us any empathy through the decades since Autism's First Child? Initially they forced "refrigerator moms" to institutionalize their small children to facilities where the abuse was unimaginable. Next they used abusive ABA tactics to inflict harm on a generation of us (and continue to with impunity at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center). Now, parents who murder their autistic children are given sympathy and we are announced to be cognitively incapable of empathy (and so much more).

The following statement is supported by the Nicaraguan Sign Language study: This whole empathy thing is anti-autistic propaganda. It is BS.

Do not believe their lies.


(*my family is autistic and a founding family of my hometown so our eccentricity was tolerated; in what is now considered child abuse, I had freedom from adult supervision so could fulfill my sensory needs and simply be myself; my hometown was a liberal midwestern haven with a large, progressive university - the absent-minded nobel prize-winning professor stereotype was my reality; and I was a fighter who the biggest male bullies didn't mess with and if I was targeted by the girls, it went over my head).

f**k you, Simon, f**k you.

He is just one of many. Some one sent me this report from the UK's National Autistic Society, pathological demand avoidance syndrome.

They report another negative spin on autism. "PDA is increasingly recognised as part of the autism spectrum." "It is a lifelong disability" of kids sick of being told what to do.

Another "autism expert" "proving" we are a pathology.

I feel that these researchers should be tried as accomplices of of parent killers of autistic children. ASAN is requesting support for prosecution of a recent killing. Generally, the parents receive sympathy for not being able to cope with their little problems.

This is outrageously tragic.

I know of no organize advocates to address the negative spin researchers are putting autism.

So I am back to the matter of the "Homer Simpson" line on the matter. the statement "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand" That is the sociopath: Very astute about what is going on in a social situation, but simply ice cold self interest with out giving a rip for anyone else unless there is something in it for him/her.

I don't see anything wrong with that article, it's a pretty unbiased summary of the current scientific understanding of PDA. That's a far cry from writing a book essentially saying autistic people ought to be pure evil, only they are too stupid to be. Have I ever told you I really, really, really dislike SBC?

If I thought that somebody, or worse a whole group of somebodies spread out all over the free world nobody knows exactly where at, were worse off than Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer, I'd probably just not say anything about them at all. It makes you wonder who it really is that just ain't right in the head. My money is on the guy who is publishing his trash talk about folks he think could easily turn serial killer, cause I haven't seen any aspies going out of their way to provoke large groups of people who they suspect are dangerous.

As big a set of brass ones as I have, I wouldn't be saying a word to nobody about my thoughts on that topic. LOL

I'm just sayin......