Hello, and welcome back to The Autistic Writer. One of the most damaging myths about autism is that autistic people lack empathy. Here, I will be unpicking that myth.
my story
Some time ago, I listened to an audiobook, a novel by Mike Gayle, titled Half A World Away. I always enjoy losing myself in a good novel, some more than others. But now and again, a novel comes along in which I become deeply emotionally invested in the characters. That’s what happened to me with Half A World Away.
Often, while listening to it, I became tearful due to the awful situation the main characters were in. It wasn’t a sugary, overwrought novel, far from it. I just identified with the characters on an emotional level.
This emotional reaction I had was an act of empathy. Some people would disagree with this. They might say characters in a novel are not real people, they are just words on a page (or in your ear), so it is not possible to empathise with them, you are just anthropomorphising them. This is not as straightforward as it might first seem, however.
what is empathy?
Most people assume empathy is the ability to understand and share other people’s feelings. In psychology, however, there are different types of empathy. For our purposes, we will look at the two most commonly recognised types: cognitive empathy and affective empathy.
Cognitive empathy
Cognitive empathy is the ability to infer what another person may be thinking or feeling. We do this by observing their behaviour, considering their circumstances, and using these clues to form an understanding of their mental and emotional state.
This ability relies upon recognising that other people have their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and perspectives, which may differ from our own. In psychology, this capacity is known as Theory of Mind (ToM). I covered ToM in the previous article, Part 7: Theory of Mind.
affective empathy
Affective empathy is the capacity to emotionally resonate with another person’s feelings. This is what most people are referring to when speaking casually about empathy.
This kind of empathy is often described as “feeling what another person feels,” but this can create a misleading impression. Human beings do not have direct access to one another’s thoughts or emotions. We cannot literally experience another person’s feelings. Telepathy is not real; we cannot read people’s minds.
Instead, empathy relies on interpreting clues such as behaviour, facial expressions, body language, words, tone of voice, and context. From these clues, we infer what another person may be thinking or feeling. Any emotions we feel in response to that are what we have created based on our understanding of the other person’s situation, rather than a direct sharing of their emotional state. This is an important point: Empathy is a creative act.
empathic errors
Using empathy is not foolproof. It is possible to misinterpret behavioural clues, and come to an entirely wrong conclusion about someone else’s emotional state. For example, you could see a loved one in tears, and become immediately concerned, asking them what is wrong, and getting upset and tearful yourself. But then your loved one tells you their tears are tears of joy because they’ve just had some wonderful news.
why is empathy important?
Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers theorised that empathy evolved in early humans as part of a system of reciprocal altruism that promoted survival in social groups.
In this theory, it’s suggested that when a person behaves altruistically, it incurs a cost; for example, time spent, energy used, or placing oneself in danger. A person might want to avoid that cost, and so not behave altruistically.
The evolution of an empathic impulse, the capacity to understand and resonate with another’s emotional state, promotes the urge to act altruistically, fostering social cooperation and ultimately greater survival chances for the group.
There are other theories of the development of empathy. Primatologist Frans de Waal argued that empathy probably evolved to support parental care and was later extended to wider social relationships. A parent who can recognise hunger, pain, and distress in others, and feels compelled to act on it, is more likely to keep their offspring alive.
Whatever the truth about how empathy emerged in humans, over time it has come to be seen as an important facet of being human. Having a high level of empathy is seen as a desirable trait.
the myth of empathy deficiency in autism
As discussed in the previous article, Part 7: Theory of Mind, work by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen (which has since been robustly challenged by other professionals) led to a common myth that autistic people lack empathy. This myth has become so embedded in popular culture that autistic people are often viewed as emotionally cold or morally detached. This misconception has fed harmful stereotypes that autistic people are dangerous, despite there being no evidence linking autism to psychopathy or a lack of emotional experience.
a simple rebuttal
The easiest way for anyone to dispel the myth that autism is characterised by a lack of empathy is to listen to autistic people’s own consistent reports of intense emotional concern for people, animals, fictional characters, and sometimes even inanimate objects. That lived experience is one reason the concept of autistic hyper-empathy has gained increasing attention in recent years.
autistic hyper-empathy
Many autistic adults describe experiences such as feeling sorry for a toy left alone, assigning emotional states to possessions, or becoming emotionally attached to inanimate objects. I personally have raised smiles and laughter from people due to my insistence that I rotate through using all my themed coffee mugs, because I don’t want any of them to feel left out.
Sometimes, autistic people experience overwhelming concern for animals, fictional characters, or even abstract entities. This can happen because, as explained above, empathy is a creative act. The objects of our empathy do not need to have emotional or mental states of their own; we assign those states to them based on their circumstances.
The Intense World Theory
One explanation for the high levels of empathy experienced by autistic people comes from the Intense World Theory, proposed by Henry Markram, Kamila Markram, and Tania Rinaldi in 2007.
This theory argues that autism may involve heightened perception, attention, emotional responsiveness, and memory, rather than reduced responsiveness.
Under this framework, strong emotional reactions to people, animals, fictional characters, or even objects might arise because autistic emotional experiences are amplified, not diminished.
The theory remains controversial, but it offers a compelling alternative to deficit-based accounts, and aligns closely with the lived experience of autistic people.
Empathy deficit theory rebutted
In my opinion, the claim that autistic people lack empathy is completely without foundation or merit. The underlying Theory of Mind Deficit model of autism has been robustly challenged, repeatedly, by professionals in the psychology and autism fields. But the most compelling rebuttal remains the actual lived experience of autistic people.
That’s all for this time. Take care.
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One response to “Part 8: Empathy and Autism”
I used to say all the time that I lacked empathy! It took people around me showing the multitude of ways they see me displaying empathy for me to realize it. I would argue isn’t a lack of empathy, but it is hard for us to see where it is being shown.