A deeper dive into autism and empathy
I have a theory about autistic empathy that I think explains why there's such a widespread misconception that autistic people lack empathy... and I think it can potentially remove a lot of the current stigma around autism.
For those who don't know, there are different types of empathy. The main two being cognitive and emotional empathy.
Most people who talk about empathy, are talking about emotional empathy.
Which is having experienced the thing yourself and therefore being able to emotionally understand what the other person is going through.
But there's another type of empathy, where a person can understand what the other person is going through even though they don't know what it feels like themselves.
This is cognitive empathy.
Personally, I feel like the description of cognitive empathy is more about compassion than empathy, but I'm going to stick with the terms experts in the field are using for now.
So, here's where my theory comes in.
I think most autistic people have the capacity to experience emotional empathy.
If we've experienced the thing ourselves, I think most of us have the capacity to empathize with the other person.
The "problem" occurs when we either don't know that the other person is experiencing something we have personally experienced ourselves, or when the other person is experiencing something we haven't experienced.
And because many of us don't pick up on things that aren't explicitly stated or explained to us, I see this as a barrier when it comes to accessing our empathy.
For example, if a person is going through something I've gone through, but hasn't explicitly told me they're going through it... it's not that I can't empathize, it's that I don't have the necessary context (understanding and awareness) to do so.
And it's the same for cognitive empathy... except in this case, it's about me lacking the necessary context to access my compassion for the other person.
In other words, when an autistic person isn't expressing empathy (either cognitive or emotional) it's not necessarily the case that they lack the ability to do so...
I think it's more likely due to them not *automatically* understanding the context of what the person is going through, which nonautistic people are often able to pick up on without being explicitly told about.
P.s. Some autistic people may actually "lack" empathy. But research has consistently found that a lack of empathy is not a feature of the autistic experience.
I'll share a few research links on autism and empathy below for reference.
Links to research for reference...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39115741/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39016632/