These are notes on empathy and autism; not for everyone.
Cognitive empathy relates to perspective-taking and understanding the emotional states of others. Affective empathy denotes the conscious resonation of another’s feelings (i.e., experiencing congruent emotional states; Kimmig et al., 2024).
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals exhibits similar responses to normal individuals when witnessing emotionally distressing video scenes, yet exhibit self-report interpretations that are “dampened” emotionally (Trimmer et al., 2021).
It is interesting that tolerance and acceptance of empathic deficiencies in individuals seems directly related to economically exchanged benefits to those expressing tolerance and acceptance; the same could be said of any kind of socially perceived disorder in an individual or group of individuals. This is a largely depressing observation, for it seems that an autistic individual needs to move mountains for normal humanity in order to afford inclusion, tolerance, and much more, acceptance. I think of individuals like Temple Grandin and others who outsized economic benefit to “normie” populations.
References
Kimmig, A. S., Burger, L., Schall, M., Derntl, B., & Wildgruber, D. (2024). Impairment of affective and cognitive empathy in high functioning autism is mediated by alterations in emotional reactivity. Nature Scientific Reports (14)21662. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71825-1
Trimmer, E., McDonald, S., & Rushby, J. A., (2016). Not knowing what I feel: Emotional empathy in autism spectrum disorders. Autism 24(4) 450–457. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361316648520.