(1) (conventional story) The point of empathy is to form factually/predictively accurate beliefs about another person’s state of mind and therefore what they will do and feel
(2) (my idiosyncratic story) The point of empathy is that, if you’re talking to someone or thinking about someone, and you are aware of how they’re feeling, that “awareness” (in neurotypical brains) takes the form of a transient automatic empathetic simulation of the other person, and this mechanism causes automatic “response feelings” in oneself—and these “response feelings” might be pro-social and pro-understanding, but also might not.
For example, if I think someone is angry at me, I might automatically get angry back. If I think someone is feeling condescending towards me, I might automatically get defensive and angry. If I think someone is sad, I might automatically feel sympathetic towards them (or feel triumphant over them! These are complicated circuits!) Etc. etc.
I was talking about (2). My theory is that in autism the “response feelings” in story (2) are so strong that they’re aversive, and people with classic autism adopt the coping strategy of avoiding invoking them altogether, by avoiding the specific type of mental operation that I call “empathetic simulation”. And in psychopaths, the “response feelings” are so weak as to be barely felt, and psychopaths adopt the coping strategy of seeking out situations that invoke unusually strong “response feelings”, like watching people suffer.
As for (1), I do not in fact believe that the neurotypical suite of social instincts (including the transient effortless type of “empathetic simulation”) are particularly effective at forming factually/predictively accurate beliefs about another person’s state of mind.
(Example neurotypical conversation: --”Hey Emily, you got mud all over the refrigerator again, c’mon you gotta clean that up!” —”God, Mom, you’re always talking about the fridge, it’s like you’re totally obsessed with it, we both know you don’t REALLY care about the fridge, you’re REALLY just pissed off that I found a boyfriend who loves me, and you just want me to be miserable and lonely like you are!” …Well, not a lot of factually accurate beliefs about mind-states going on in this conversation!)
So in terms of (1), I would strongly agree with your proposal of “attempting to model another person’s mind works much less well if the other person’s mind works much differently”. I would also add something like “all the ways that neurotypical people form factually inaccurate beliefs about other people’s minds get treated as ‘normal human relations’, but all the ways that people with autism form factually inaccurate beliefs about other people’s minds get treated as pathological.” Some combination of those two things, I figure.
What’s the evidence for this?
Umm, maybe 30 minutes of google searching :-P I’m open to being corrected obviously
There’s a distinction that is important to make when it comes to empathy, between ‘cognitive empathy’ and ‘emotional empathy’, that is a good starting place. The empathy divide goes all ways when it comes to neurology—neurotypicals have a harder time understanding autistics and (the opposite neurotype of autistic folk, who might have been diagnosed psychopaths at some point but don’t have a definite entry in the DSM-V).
Cognitive empathy is being able to understand another person’s perspective and mental state. Everyone needs to learn this, but if people think similarly to you it is easier because you have some baseline assumptions that are correct. It is often more urgent to learn this for people who don’t share your neurotype if you are autistic (or the specific neurotype that is psychopathic?-opposite-of-autism) because you aren’t in the majority in most circumstances—and assuming that everyone thinks the same way you do leads to wrong conclusions that cause wrong predictions quite quickly.
Affective or emotional empathy. Responding to another’s mental state with our own emotions, when we are affected by them. Sympathy, concern, and personal distress tend to fall into this. We vary as much as anybody on this one, with some potential complications—we may be hyperempathic, and emotionally respond more than neurotypicals to a wider range of stimuli, including perceiving impossible things like the emotional state of a toaster due to hypersensitivity. We may be alexithymic, and not understand our own emotions enough to be able to express them at all without some aggressive introspection, much less appropriately. We may be too overwhelmed by the emotion to use it to find an appropriate response (try literally feeling your pain under intense world theory). We may not know any appropriate response, or the generally appropriate response for our neurotype is not the appropriate one for yours (whereas it may have been a good guess with minds more like ours). If we do know an appropriate response, expressing ourselves with a script, with nonverbal communication, or any other ‘odd’ way may be more difficult to understand or receive on their end.
I want to distinguish two stories about empathy:
(1) (conventional story) The point of empathy is to form factually/predictively accurate beliefs about another person’s state of mind and therefore what they will do and feel
(2) (my idiosyncratic story) The point of empathy is that, if you’re talking to someone or thinking about someone, and you are aware of how they’re feeling, that “awareness” (in neurotypical brains) takes the form of a transient automatic empathetic simulation of the other person, and this mechanism causes automatic “response feelings” in oneself—and these “response feelings” might be pro-social and pro-understanding, but also might not.
For example, if I think someone is angry at me, I might automatically get angry back. If I think someone is feeling condescending towards me, I might automatically get defensive and angry. If I think someone is sad, I might automatically feel sympathetic towards them (or feel triumphant over them! These are complicated circuits!) Etc. etc.
I was talking about (2). My theory is that in autism the “response feelings” in story (2) are so strong that they’re aversive, and people with classic autism adopt the coping strategy of avoiding invoking them altogether, by avoiding the specific type of mental operation that I call “empathetic simulation”. And in psychopaths, the “response feelings” are so weak as to be barely felt, and psychopaths adopt the coping strategy of seeking out situations that invoke unusually strong “response feelings”, like watching people suffer.
As for (1), I do not in fact believe that the neurotypical suite of social instincts (including the transient effortless type of “empathetic simulation”) are particularly effective at forming factually/predictively accurate beliefs about another person’s state of mind.
(Example neurotypical conversation:
--”Hey Emily, you got mud all over the refrigerator again, c’mon you gotta clean that up!”
—”God, Mom, you’re always talking about the fridge, it’s like you’re totally obsessed with it, we both know you don’t REALLY care about the fridge, you’re REALLY just pissed off that I found a boyfriend who loves me, and you just want me to be miserable and lonely like you are!”
…Well, not a lot of factually accurate beliefs about mind-states going on in this conversation!)
So in terms of (1), I would strongly agree with your proposal of “attempting to model another person’s mind works much less well if the other person’s mind works much differently”. I would also add something like “all the ways that neurotypical people form factually inaccurate beliefs about other people’s minds get treated as ‘normal human relations’, but all the ways that people with autism form factually inaccurate beliefs about other people’s minds get treated as pathological.” Some combination of those two things, I figure.
Umm, maybe 30 minutes of google searching :-P I’m open to being corrected obviously
There’s a distinction that is important to make when it comes to empathy, between ‘cognitive empathy’ and ‘emotional empathy’, that is a good starting place. The empathy divide goes all ways when it comes to neurology—neurotypicals have a harder time understanding autistics and (the opposite neurotype of autistic folk, who might have been diagnosed psychopaths at some point but don’t have a definite entry in the DSM-V).
Cognitive empathy is being able to understand another person’s perspective and mental state. Everyone needs to learn this, but if people think similarly to you it is easier because you have some baseline assumptions that are correct. It is often more urgent to learn this for people who don’t share your neurotype if you are autistic (or the specific neurotype that is psychopathic?-opposite-of-autism) because you aren’t in the majority in most circumstances—and assuming that everyone thinks the same way you do leads to wrong conclusions that cause wrong predictions quite quickly.
Affective or emotional empathy. Responding to another’s mental state with our own emotions, when we are affected by them. Sympathy, concern, and personal distress tend to fall into this. We vary as much as anybody on this one, with some potential complications—we may be hyperempathic, and emotionally respond more than neurotypicals to a wider range of stimuli, including perceiving impossible things like the emotional state of a toaster due to hypersensitivity. We may be alexithymic, and not understand our own emotions enough to be able to express them at all without some aggressive introspection, much less appropriately. We may be too overwhelmed by the emotion to use it to find an appropriate response (try literally feeling your pain under intense world theory). We may not know any appropriate response, or the generally appropriate response for our neurotype is not the appropriate one for yours (whereas it may have been a good guess with minds more like ours). If we do know an appropriate response, expressing ourselves with a script, with nonverbal communication, or any other ‘odd’ way may be more difficult to understand or receive on their end.