Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
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Autistic people, after all, are known for preferring logic (I certainly do).
And we’re also known for thinking outside the box – meaning that if we’re forced to make false decisions based on faulty assumptions, then we are quite likely to make the ‘wrong’ choice.
Interested to hear others’ thoughts on this! And I’ll be looking for another influential study to look closely at.
I really enjoy analyzing things!
End of thread. 🧵
@KatyElphinstone
Wow ok I have so many thoughts and want to research this back clinically. I’m happy to see this thread getting some action I’ll see what I can throw on and see what others have to say. Keep in mind.
The whole lack of empathy thing is least
. 86-90 years old at least. Plus there’s another angle I have to run down thanks for the thread!
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@EVDHmn @farah @KatyElphinstone
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like a bad penny
@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
Hows it been going up north? We finally hit 32 it’s like a bloody heat wave. -
Autistic participants were more likely than non-autistic participants to say Sally was to blame, despite her good intentions.
This was interpreted as evidence of faulty moral reasoning or reduced empathy.
But that conclusion rests on three errors of logic built into the task itself, and not on evidence that autistic people care less about others.
️@KatyElphinstone Janet is responsible, but also her friend for not asking someone else to doule check the facts of the situation.
Janet made a mistake (or she lied). Did the story tell us if Janet was lying or mistaken? Lies should be punished, mistakes should be taken as Janet needing better education,. A lie or Janet didnt know any better, so an adult should have told her the truth.
We should learn from mistakes, not be punished for what we didnt know.
Involuntary manslaughter.
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@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
Hows it been going up north? We finally hit 32 it’s like a bloody heat wave.@EVDHmn @farah @KatyElphinstone
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still cool, but it almost never froze. Sun today.
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Autistic participants were more likely than non-autistic participants to say Sally was to blame, despite her good intentions.
This was interpreted as evidence of faulty moral reasoning or reduced empathy.
But that conclusion rests on three errors of logic built into the task itself, and not on evidence that autistic people care less about others.
️@KatyElphinstone Faulty moral reasoning of the person who told the story and/or created the test.
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Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html
In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.
️ #Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #Psychology #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic
@KatyElphinstone Also, some autistics have learned to not show feelings whatsoever. I met someone who had no feelings in their tone and reacted as if he had no feelings on anything.
Asking him why he had no feelings, he told me it was out of a need to survive, for whenever he did have feelings, his father would grab him by the neck, lift him into the air and hold him against a wall.
Yeah, we got some PTSD there.
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@EVDHmn @farah @KatyElphinstone
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still cool, but it almost never froze. Sun today.@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
We had cold températures, probably not cold for a season pro like you. I had to get creative and essentially layer my flat in air gapped microclimates, 40 degrees or 3/4 isn’t all that warm inside when its -10 outside -
@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
We had cold températures, probably not cold for a season pro like you. I had to get creative and essentially layer my flat in air gapped microclimates, 40 degrees or 3/4 isn’t all that warm inside when its -10 outside@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
By the Time I was done my appartment kind of looked like a scene out of dexter with all the plastic and duct tape . -
@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
We had cold températures, probably not cold for a season pro like you. I had to get creative and essentially layer my flat in air gapped microclimates, 40 degrees or 3/4 isn’t all that warm inside when its -10 outside@EVDHmn @farah @KatyElphinstone
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oh, I’m on the coast, I don’t think my hummingbird feeder froze since November. I don’t think I’ve seen -10 this winter. -
@punishmenthurts @farah @KatyElphinstone
By the Time I was done my appartment kind of looked like a scene out of dexter with all the plastic and duct tape . -
Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html
In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.
️ #Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #Psychology #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic
@KatyElphinstone I have rarely read an article so loaded with bad faith and bad assumptions. Wow. I can't even get to the points you're discussing over that.
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Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html
In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.
️ #Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #Psychology #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic
@KatyElphinstone what was the result from the control set with allistics (non-autistic people)?
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@KatyElphinstone I have rarely read an article so loaded with bad faith and bad assumptions. Wow. I can't even get to the points you're discussing over that.
@KatyElphinstone Like, none of this relates to Theory of Mind. At all.
"This shows that their judgments rely more on the outcome of the incident than on an understanding of the person's intentions"
Yes, two things about that.
a) People judge way more based on outcomes than intentions. It's a lesson driven home by every "you're so weird" I heard throughout my life. It takes real effort for folk to take intentions on board, and they're not usually willing to expend that effort.
And b) it's...
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Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html
In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.
️ #Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #Psychology #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic
@KatyElphinstone
Sounds like running the question past a philosopher would have cleared up a few things. -
@KatyElphinstone Like, none of this relates to Theory of Mind. At all.
"This shows that their judgments rely more on the outcome of the incident than on an understanding of the person's intentions"
Yes, two things about that.
a) People judge way more based on outcomes than intentions. It's a lesson driven home by every "you're so weird" I heard throughout my life. It takes real effort for folk to take intentions on board, and they're not usually willing to expend that effort.
And b) it's...
@KatyElphinstone ... also how law works. At least that's the idea. Germany doesn't use so much case law (it still does), so the general idea is that first, the facts determine what the crime is, and THEN intentions influence whether the punishment is more or less severe than the baseline.
So how can one turn into a moral failing what the very foundation of our rule of law is supposedly built upon?
It boggles the mind.
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@KatyElphinstone ... also how law works. At least that's the idea. Germany doesn't use so much case law (it still does), so the general idea is that first, the facts determine what the crime is, and THEN intentions influence whether the punishment is more or less severe than the baseline.
So how can one turn into a moral failing what the very foundation of our rule of law is supposedly built upon?
It boggles the mind.
@KatyElphinstone "those with a milder form of autism such as Asperger's syndrome, often develop compensatory mechanisms to deal with their difficulties in understanding other people's thoughts. The details of these mechanisms are unknown"
The mechanisms are "unknown"? They're observation and deduction, forced on by having to figure out your illogical shit with no help from you and no manual.
What a twerp. They're supposed to be a scientist, and have this shit down.
Cthulhu weeps, that's bad.
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@sinvega@mas.to @KatyElphinstone@mas.to I started with a message lower in the thread. Once I read the context, my immediate reaction was to say, out loud, "wtf, she shouldn't be asserting things if she doesn't know"
Like yeah, I think she is responsible, because her lack of double checking is what led to the outcome. Does that mean I want something to be done? Hell no! At most this is a cautionary tale of why you should always know the edge of your knowledge, nothing moreI so agree about knowing the edge of your knowledge. At least a little humility...
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@KatyElphinstone I'm autistic. I'm empathtic enough that someone else's misery makes me feel miserable. When I say I want everyone to be ok, not only do I care about the well being of others, it also would improve my own quality of life. The pain and suffering of other people hurts me.
I'm the same.
This thread is actually a byproduct out of an article I'm writing on autistic empathy. I'm nearly done but these are the kinds of things that will go into it.
(And when finished I'll be asking for people's thoughts / feedback!)
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@KatyElphinstone I have explicitly argued more than once that we have two different concepts that are routinely conflated in broader society, excuses and reasons.
An excuse is an ethical justification for a thing.
A reason is a logical justification for a thing.If I acknowledged that theft is logically justified by lack of wealth, whether that entails an excuse is an entirely other argument to be had.
I wouldn't have necessarily coded this bright line division as autistic but...
Ooh beautifully put!! I'm bookmarking your post so I don't forget.
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Within this frame, prioritizing outcomes over intentions is coded as a moral error...
A lack of understanding about the situation and about other people.
Even though, for the person who’s now dead, intentions make very little difference, while the outcome has been quite important to them.
️Have you encountered this analysis? It feels like it's relevant:
