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ASD vs Psychopathy regarding Empathy

JuniperFromGallifrey

I really like all the research Francesca Happe is doing at King's College on ASD, including researching the difference of psychopaths regarding empathy. In her video https://youtu.be/Sh1IsnwVQis  she uses the term "Mind Blindness" instead of issues with Empathy.

Some of it is echoed in this book: 

"Psychopaths are the opposite of autistic: they are good at telling what you are thinking and may use that to manipulate you, but don’t give a damn about your feelings. In autism, feeling empathy must also be distinguished from expressing empathy – the latter may prove challenging for some autistic people, especially if expected to act in narrowly defined, normative ways to show they care."

Link: https://dart.ed.ac.uk/autism-book/

Additional research:

"However, many different cognitive and affective processes may lead to unempathic behavior and the social processing profiles of individuals with high psychopathic vs. ASD traits are likely different. Whilst psychopathy appears characterized by problems with resonating with others’ emotions,"

Link: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/52141076/Dissecting_empathy_high_levels_of_psychopathic_and_autistic_traits_are_characterized_by_difficulties_in_different_social_information_processing_domains_GoldPub.pdf

There are publications everywhere. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17018169/

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    "lumping autistic individuals ... into the same psychosis as psychopaths. It just didn't seem right."

    Yes, totally.

    I'd like to read up on the other parts of your initial post here. I spent about 2 hours listening to the video and taking notes - it was really a good one.

    And thanks for all the encouragement here Slight smile

  • in reply to calmerchameleon

    Anxiety does serve a function and a purpose. But not one to torment us daily. 

    I wouldn't assume much cherry picking, more like hunting for clues. Puzzling things are worth investigation and I suppose that's how I stumbled on Francesca. The issue of 'Empathy' really confused me. Also lumping autistic individuals (and I'm not an expert, but I know a few....!) into the same psychosis as psychopaths. It just didn't seem right. 

    If you're looking for answers and one clue leads to another, I'd say don't stop! I try to mind the context usually. All humans experience anxiety. At it's function alerts us of danger. Perception is important, our understanding, beliefs and what we're subjected or subject to. Defence mechanisms as survival mechanisms play a role and apparently Lacan suggested that the autistic mind has a difficulty creating these (I think there's more now but basic 12 can be found https://vocal.media/longevity/the-12-freudian-defense-mechanisms).

    Anyway. Good luck with your quest! Please enlighten us with your findings when you get to the other side :) 

  • I'm going through the video.

    It's interesting for me to observe how, even though not mentioned in the video, from what I understand about how anxiety works, it seems like anxiety can play a number of the same diminishing effects seen in each of the three categories of traits.

    1. Mind-blindness

    The same researcher, Francesca Happé, has explored evidence that frontal lobe surgery could lead to mind-blindness
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393200000932

    What has anxiety got to do with frontal lobe?

    "Neuroimaging studies repeatedly show abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex in anxious individuals."
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18019606/

    2. Executive function

    "Observations evidenced that some deficits in working memory, planning, and mental flexibility were highly correlated with anxiety and depressive disorders."
    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2016.00195/full

    3. Detail-focused processing

    "frequent exposure to early life adversity was found to be associated with detail-oriented visual processing style"
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6131021/


    I found it interesting that each of the aspects that Francesca mentioned had me thinking "hmm, high anxiety can also have these effects".

    I also realise it's quite easy for someone like me to make a coherent-seeming argument by cherry-picking research studies to support an idea.

    I'm not suggesting here that anxiety causes autism - rather to note that it is interesting that effects of anxiety overlap a fair bit with the traits of autism. Just interesting I found Slight smile

  • This looks really interesting. I'm 'meant to be' asleep so I'll have a look over properly tomorrow.

    Recently I've been looking at an area called the 'double empathy problem' which talks about how empathy involves both perceiving and responding to emotions in others, and that NTs and NDs may each perceive and respond to emotions in others in different ways to each other.