Empathy & Compassion

People with Autism Can Read Emotions, Feel Empathy

by |Published

There is a fine line between autism and alexithymia—feeling emotions but being unable to identify them

 

There is a persistent stereotype that people with autism are individuals who lack empathy and cannot understand emotion. It’s true that many people with autism don’t show emotion in ways that people without the condition would recognize.

But the notion that people with autism generally lack empathy and cannot recognize feelings is wrong. Holding such a view can distort our perception of these individuals and possibly delay effective treatments

 

By Rebecca Brewer, Jennifer Murphy

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Empathy is fundamentally, from a moral stand point, a bad thing. It makes the world worse” — Paul Bloom Professor of Psychology & Cognitive Science, Yale University

The above is an excerpt from a short preview animated by the Atlantic of Paul Bloom’s stance against empathy in his up-coming book on the subject

I found the short to be disheartening in its discarding of empathy as an essential part of life — in our relationships, our interactions and our ability to contribute to our society, culture and community.

 

Bloom understands empathy as “putting oneself in the shoes of another”, consequently increasing the likelihood of “helping or caring for that person”. Why does he think this is a bad thing? Bloom claims that it “blinds us to the long term consequences of our actions”; the consequences being that the empathy driven concern for people shadows the engagement of greater issues:

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