Simon Baron-Cohen: Aspergers Less Empathetic than Psycopaths
Narcissists, borderline and psychopathic personalities are introduced as people lacking "affective empathy" – the ability to feel others' feelings. Baron-Cohen's new paradigm classifies these personality types as "zero-negative": a zero amount of affective empathy being a negative condition, because the ability to self-regulate the way they treat others is significantly compromised.
By contrast, Baron-Cohen defines people with Asperger's syndrome or classic autism, which is his own field, as "zero-positive". Like the zero-negatives these people lack affective empathy, but in addition they score zero on "cognitive empathy" – thinking others' thoughts.
Because some zero-positive individuals have, through their unusual ability to systemize, pushed human culture forwards with their discoveries (Einstein was late to talk – a sign of classic autism – yet he was an extreme systemizer who discovered E = mc2), Baron-Cohen categorizes them "zero empathy positive".
From THE GUARDIAN, British paper
This is wrong. Autistics have affective empathy but may have low cognitive empathy due to the TOM issue. I thought that Simon Baron-Cohen had changed the wording in his book when this was pointed out to him.
From the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center: "Contemporary researchers often differentiate between two types of empathy: “Affective empathy” refers to the sensations and feelings we get in response to others’ emotions; this can include mirroring what that person is feeling, or just feeling stressed when we detect another’s fear or anxiety. “Cognitive empathy,” sometimes called “perspective taking,” refers to our ability to identify and understand other peoples’ emotions. Studies suggest that people with autism spectrum disorders have a hard time empathizing."
Complicating this last line, the Markham study suggests that ASDs possess overall higher levels of affective empathy. Our lack is in the cognitive empathy area.
So, even though I also have problems with some of the Markham's other conclusions, this nuance helps me understand the disconnect I'd always felt when I read that autistics lack empathy. I pick up on the emotions, I just have a hard time understanding their meaning. I am exceedingly grateful that people are studying autism, I just don't care for premature pronouncements that may lead to ongoing misleading stereotypes.
So, even though I also have problems with some of the Markham's other conclusions, this nuance helps me understand the disconnect I'd always felt when I read that autistics lack empathy. I pick up on the emotions, I just have a hard time understanding their meaning. I am exceedingly grateful that people are studying autism, I just don't care for premature pronouncements that may lead to ongoing misleading stereotypes.
Edit* You've already linked the paper.
Personally I find it hard to read people, so for me my affective empathy is poor.
Last edited by Acedia on 12 Mar 2014, 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
A post from my blog which deals with the PHYSICAL REALITY of emotion and empathy.
I want to go ahead today and add a response I posted on an Asperger website after another poster quoted from "The Simpsons." The idea in the quote relates to the Asperger / Social Majority conflict over emotion and a possible explanation for the misunderstanding.
Homer Simpson to Marge: "You don't appear to be in any kind of physical pain, the only type of pain a man understands".
I am female, but I am unable to tell the difference between physical and emotional pain. There are times I've gone to a medical doctor, because I really can't figure out if I'm sick or upset. This led me to read about how the brain processes pain and "feels" emotions. Guess what? There is only one circuit for both - emotional pain is physical. How could it be otherwise unless you believe that emotions are supernatural, which I'm sure many social people believe.
Only four emotions exist: the flight or fight response of aggression and fear; disgust, and pleasure. From my own experience, I suspect that Asperger individuals experience a default "neutral" state. Social children LEARN to diffuse and differentiate their basic pain responses and to give those new states names - it's a fundamental task of social training. This is especially true for females. Inflating and dispersing pain via hundreds of descriptive words serves to keep females confused, distracted from anger and fear, and obsessed with subtle differences and changes in social emotions. This socialization of pain keeps women powerless. Society teaches females to imagine that real physical responses are thousands of subtle and entangled emotions that don't really exist!
What I am suggesting is that Aspies experience basic physiological pain, not the "emotions" social children learn. Also that we have a neutral setting, which is our default setting. This benign state produces our familiar "blank reaction" when people say something unimportant or baffling. We just don't feel emotion/pain unless something in the environment triggers the fight or flight response, or pleasure or disgust. Social people interpret our neutral setting as offensive; after all, to them, everything they say or do, and the reaction they get from people, is vital to the continuing existence of the universe. Social people assume that we don't care about human beings because we're not in their frantic (to us) emotional mode 24/7. Emotion for us isn't this fantastical overwhelming supernatural state that colors and controls the fate of mankind. For us it is pain or the absence of pain - and our response is most often flight.
I think this also may explain why Asperger individuals commonly suffer from anxiety. From the time we are young, social situations are painful for us because we are rejected and treated badly. We are different, and social people react very negatively to that fact. Diversity is not really a social value.
No worries, Acedia -- I was hoping to be more clear, but the research on the dual aspects of empathy is fairly new. Also, i think like all things concerning autism, it's up to each of us to figure out where we're at -- or not, if a person doesn't wanna. Suffice it to say, I'm at a place where I reject the idea that I neither have emotions nor register others' (I have affective empathy) while I wholeheartedly accept the idea that I do not understand what those emotions are about (low cognitive empathy). Toward this end, I think we could use an updated EQ test, one that reflects both affective empathy and cognitive empathy.
Meanwhile, gonewild, I love the part where you say, "unless you believe that emotions are supernatural, which I'm sure many social people believe." I'm pretty sure you meant it humorously, and I laughed out loud! Hahahahaha!
I have way too much affective empathy. I wish I had less.
I also want to know where this LaLaLand of empathetic, abstract/big-picture thinking neurotypicals that the autism researchers seem to live in is SO I CAN MOVE THERE and get less crap for my empathy and abstract/big-picture thinking.
_________________
I'm female; my username is a pun on "nickname."
Hello 'Nick' - Where are all those fabulous kind and caring, rational, intelligent, mature neurotypicals? They don't exist. I talk a lot about NT arrogance on my blog.
http://www.aspiemanifesto.blogspot.com
http://www.aspiemanifesto.blogspot.com
I guess the ones I know personally are a figment of my imagination, then.
You sure you're not suffering from confirmation bias?
_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I ! !! !
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I
auntblabby
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There's a lot of people here who would have posted what you did in agreement to the comment you were responding to.
_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I ! !! !
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I
"There's a lot of people here who would have posted what you did in agreement to the comment you were responding to."
This sentence makes no sense.
Last edited by gonewild on 01 Apr 2014, 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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