Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
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@KatyElphinstone The whole "lack of #empathy" idea builds on the #TheoryOfMind idea, which is rotten to the core. The basic paper applying it to #autistics (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985) got the idea from an irredeemably flawed paper that had applied it to CHIMPANZEES[!] (Premack and Woodruff 1978). Both papers are hopelessly confused about what it even MEANS to say that a person — or an animal — has, or does not have, a "theory of mind". Both of these groups of researchers should have gotten clear on their concepts BEFORE conducting any experiments — and since they didn’t, both papers should have been refused publication.
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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 Reading only your description, I leaned towards "yes, she is to blame, because if she didn't know for sure she should have said so instead of pretending", but after reading the article, I'd lean towards not blaming her, because she had recently read that the jellyfish in the area are harmless, so assuming a reputable source that was actually speaking about the area, she had reason to be confident in her knowledge.
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@KatyElphinstone Reading only your description, I leaned towards "yes, she is to blame, because if she didn't know for sure she should have said so instead of pretending", but after reading the article, I'd lean towards not blaming her, because she had recently read that the jellyfish in the area are harmless, so assuming a reputable source that was actually speaking about the area, she had reason to be confident in her knowledge.
@KatyElphinstone If I (late-diagnosed autistic) imagine what I would feel/do in a situation, is that a sign that I have empathy or lack empathy? (/half-joking)
I'd feel awful and blame myself if anyone, let alone a friend of mine, died because I *carelessly* gave them wrong information. If someone died because I passed on information I was sure was reliable, I'd also feel awful, but blame the source of the misinformation... -
@KatyElphinstone If I (late-diagnosed autistic) imagine what I would feel/do in a situation, is that a sign that I have empathy or lack empathy? (/half-joking)
I'd feel awful and blame myself if anyone, let alone a friend of mine, died because I *carelessly* gave them wrong information. If someone died because I passed on information I was sure was reliable, I'd also feel awful, but blame the source of the misinformation...@KatyElphinstone ...And if the dangerous jellyfish were so new in the area that the new information had no time to dissipate, well, that just sucks. (No-one to blame. Still feeling awful because I was involved in someone's death.)
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@KatyElphinstone i'm going to assert my bias here and say that, as allistics, they assumed the meaning of "blame" they intended was the only one in play. "of *course* everyone will understand what we mean"…
I would love to see a study like "Allistic Inquiry Bias in Theory Of Mind Studies - Are Allistics The Ones With Damaged Theory Of Mind?" by a team of researchers who are on the spectrum.
@KatyElphinstone -
I would love to see a study like "Allistic Inquiry Bias in Theory Of Mind Studies - Are Allistics The Ones With Damaged Theory Of Mind?" by a team of researchers who are on the spectrum.
@KatyElphinstone -
@KatyElphinstone really interesting.
My thoughts; the theory of mind impairment interpretation requires the assumption that the only morally relevant feature was Janet's belief state, when in fact participants may have been rating her process of belief formation as a separate moral dimension.
The study did not control for the source of the belief. If Janet made her recommendation to swim based on personal experience instead of relying on a book, I bet the study would have different findings.
@KatyElphinstone @hallvors @MaidenCatladyCrone I also have to say, the sample size in this study is literally ridiculously small if it is such an influential study. The only valid takeaway at the scale of 13 would be a call for a larger scale study.
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@KatyElphinstone @hallvors @MaidenCatladyCrone I also have to say, the sample size in this study is literally ridiculously small if it is such an influential study. The only valid takeaway at the scale of 13 would be a call for a larger scale study.
They did a bunch of repetitions in different ways.
Different scenarios. One of the earlier ones was that Sally's friend was stung by a jellyfish and she poured something on it which, instead of healing it, killed the friend.I wonder they maybe changed it to 'swimming with jellyfish' because it seems a very silly thing to do (advise your friend to swim with jellyfish) whereas the first scenario was a bit more of a "oh dear but fair enough" mistake?
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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 If only their intentions were predicated on basic respect and decency for non-baselines.
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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 In my limited experience, autistic people have a lot more empathy than neurotypical ones. They do struggle with deducing a people's motivatins from their actions, not because they can't come up with an explanation or struggle with theory of mind, but because they come up with too many valid explanations, and have a hard time narrowing the field down to the most plausible ones.
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@KatyElphinstone Wowww... I appreciate you posting this; I had never read about that study before, and it seems so incredibly full of pitfalls and flaws as to be utterly nonsensical.
So we get in trouble for not assigning blame? Or for assigning blame to someone who didn't have certain knowledge (basically blaming someone for ignorance, which I often do, tbh).
To me, it would be common sense not to swim with jellyfish if you didn't know what they were because certain species of them *are* dangerous. Making assumptions like that (I can swim safely because my friend said so) just seems like something that a lot of people do -- that perhaps we NDs often don't, as we are such information hounds?
I mean everybody else else's mileage might vary but... my first thought about jellyfish would be a certain percentage of them are dangerous, why swim with them at all? So the person who didn't have the knowledge and told their friend it was OK absolutely is at fault in my mind. I actually feel outrage that they did not have all the facts; I think a lot of people move through the world without any facts at all in their brains.
What about the mushroom question? Where does that even come from?! So the person giving the mushrooms to their supposed friend *thought* they were poisonous and gave them anyway? Why? And then they weren't poisonous so they get off the hook?! What the heck? Who would even think to do that? What kind of question even is that?
If that's not emotion about something -- even a situation that's completely unreal -- I don't know what it is. But it's emotion over injustice and incomplete information, not over behavior. These researchers completely overlooked that, and expected the very small cohort of autistic people (so small as to be statistically insignificant re an actual scientific study), got dinged for not having emotions about people. That is so very Neurotypical
@arisummerland @KatyElphinstone
Oof, this hit home very hard! My partner would often get mad at me for instinctively double checking something he said, and take that personally as lack of trust. But I do that with everyone, I just want to be sure for myself before doing something I may regret. Luckily the situation changed after I got diagnosed.
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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 @grrrr_shark I struggle to read these articles since I always felt that many of the struggles my kids had growing up came from an overabundance of empathy.
They did not always read social situations correctly, but that is not at all the same thing.
Must pace now before so the rage can pass.,
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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 Id heard this theory, but I hadn’t heard of the jellyfish test, and now I’m more angry than before about it
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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 (context - I'm NT but my three children are AuDHD as is their mother)
I totally get why people sometimes think Autistic empathy isn't there - but in my experience it is nearly always the logic (& the amount of times I've had to explain to A. [childrens mother] how NT people are 'thinking' or rather the "script" they are operating from)
As you say there is a lot of normative assumption in the question - why isn't the person who told Janet the jellyfish are harmless to blame?
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@KatyElphinstone Id heard this theory, but I hadn’t heard of the jellyfish test, and now I’m more angry than before about it
@stufromoz @KatyElphinstone I feel sure this study is deeply flawed. The whole scenario with the jellyfish is ridiculous!
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@KatyElphinstone (context - I'm NT but my three children are AuDHD as is their mother)
I totally get why people sometimes think Autistic empathy isn't there - but in my experience it is nearly always the logic (& the amount of times I've had to explain to A. [childrens mother] how NT people are 'thinking' or rather the "script" they are operating from)
As you say there is a lot of normative assumption in the question - why isn't the person who told Janet the jellyfish are harmless to blame?
@KatyElphinstone I kind of didn't express myself in that really - too many context/caveat things
basically autistic brains are spending a load of their time thinking "What does this person want from me here" AND non autistic people are thinking "I understand this situation completely" despite having not really thought about it
there will always be a mismatch
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@KatyElphinstone (context - I'm NT but my three children are AuDHD as is their mother)
I totally get why people sometimes think Autistic empathy isn't there - but in my experience it is nearly always the logic (& the amount of times I've had to explain to A. [childrens mother] how NT people are 'thinking' or rather the "script" they are operating from)
As you say there is a lot of normative assumption in the question - why isn't the person who told Janet the jellyfish are harmless to blame?
Ooh that is such a good point! I love your idea about the person who told Janet being to blame.
It starts to show up how our system of blame and exoneration is rather a witch hunt, and not very logical
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@KatyElphinstone
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Thing is, when I as an Autistic blame someone or something, I’m just identifying the causal chain of events - there’s nothing “moral,” about it.
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It’s a “moral,” matter when you’re planning to punish who or whatever caused the problem. As a lifelong God’s fool sort of Autistic, that isn’t automatic, in fact I try to never punish anyone for anything.
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So “blame,” is a word that means different things to different neurotypes, making these tests faulty from the start. We’re suppose to lack empathy because for them, blaming Sally means hurting Sally, which it doesn’t for me.
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Worse, their version includes punishment, and they think that’s Human Nature and true for everyone so they don’t even try to compensate for that confound.
🤨
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#ND #ActuallyAutistic #Autism @autistics@KatyElphinstone @autistics
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the number of likes the above toot got is extremely encouraging for me, thank you all so much.
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This bit of text is from just a few toots down (now gone), but I want to make a thread:
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Waaaiit a minute - this study could be interpreted exactly that way, couldn’t it? That the Autistics don’t assume the right to punish whoever was wrong, so they don’t see the problem with naming names - we Autistics lack empathy - for a cruelty we were never going to apply in the first place. It’s their cruelty to punish Sally, but our “lack of empathy,” to not even dream of it?
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So this study does indeed suggest that Autistics don’t automatically punish, or think of it.
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For my part, I knew punishment is an Allistic trait, but this is the first bit of “normal science,” that I can interpret as saying it’s not an Autistic trait. That’s sort of huge!
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Back live:
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I’m curious, were the Autistics never going to punish Sally, or is it just a separate issue? Did we think of it as we read the example, that she would be sent to prison or something before we answered?
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Or did the fact that they never said that in the setup, that it was “understood,” make it not part of the question for you, did we read it literally, this and nothing else?
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I’m so happy for this human based test of theirs, you’d never get this far with the puppet one.
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If anyone has anything, I’d love to hear it.
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#ND #ActuallyAutistic #Autism -
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 there is also (I suspect) a lot of personal history in this. I would suggest there are very few autistics who haven’t been blamed for things which they didn’t know that “should have been obvious”
