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Discovery 3 - Empathy (and testing)

Lotus

Tyrell: Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil? Involuntary dilation of the iris?
Deckard: We call it Voight-Kampff for short.


Empathy comes in 3 "flavours" . 

Cognitive empathy is the ability to know how other people feel and what they might be thinking. Also known as perspective taking, it is useful for motivating people or in negotiations. I never knew this was a type of empathy until recently. It requires good non verbal communication skills, which is why autistic people have difficulty with it (See my previous post "Discovery 2 - Let's talk about communication" for more  information)

Compassionate empathy is wanting to help other people, or animals, in pain and distress. People who have this trait but can keep an emotional distance to avoid being overcome by it make good nurses, paramedics etc. 

Emotional or affective empathy is when you feel another person's emotion. Autistic people can feel this very strongly, sometimes more than an NT person, so the assumption that we have no empathy is not true. This misunderstanding may be caused by our struggle to know how to respond to the distress of others, which could be interpreted as a lack of caring. However Autistic people may get overcome by their distressing emotions and may shut down emotionally in response to to becoming overloaded.

The Voight-Kampff test was in a movie, however  there are empathy tests, plus many others, to determine whether a person is Autistic. This can be useful, as it can lead to kind, empathic people helping those who want and need support to deal with  life. But testing and diagnosis should not be allowed to lead to doubts over competence or the feeling that one is doing something "wrong". NT people misread Autistic people too.  It's just difference.

Parents

  • I wonder where I fit in all of that. I know I am not good at all at cognitive empathy, however the quote below is also me...this happened to me recently and I needed crisis intervention. I was already at my limits for sensory overload when I received some really bad news about something that had happened to a family member and I think that was too emotional for me if that makes sense. However, had I not been at my limits already I doubt I would have needed this.

    My brain really struggles with the paradoxical nature of ASD. This was one of the reasons I couldn't accept my diagnosis in the beginning, my brain just couldn't make sense of what seemed like lots of contradictions. 

    It was speaking to someone on the NAS helpline who helped me to come to terms with this a bit more in that the way my brain was even having this difficulty was typically autistic too.

    To have some kind of mental respite from constantly trying to figure it all it, I have that conversation at the forefront of my mind most of the time.

    Lotus said:
    However Autistic people may get overcome by their distressing emotions and may shut down emotionally in response to to becoming overloaded.
Reply

  • I wonder where I fit in all of that. I know I am not good at all at cognitive empathy, however the quote below is also me...this happened to me recently and I needed crisis intervention. I was already at my limits for sensory overload when I received some really bad news about something that had happened to a family member and I think that was too emotional for me if that makes sense. However, had I not been at my limits already I doubt I would have needed this.

    My brain really struggles with the paradoxical nature of ASD. This was one of the reasons I couldn't accept my diagnosis in the beginning, my brain just couldn't make sense of what seemed like lots of contradictions. 

    It was speaking to someone on the NAS helpline who helped me to come to terms with this a bit more in that the way my brain was even having this difficulty was typically autistic too.

    To have some kind of mental respite from constantly trying to figure it all it, I have that conversation at the forefront of my mind most of the time.

    Lotus said:
    However Autistic people may get overcome by their distressing emotions and may shut down emotionally in response to to becoming overloaded.
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