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Empathy often does require conscious thought from me, I'm curious if that makes me a sociopath. I have to intentionally imagine myself in the other person's sit
by tuesdayrain 8y ago
Empathy often does require conscious thought from me, I'm curious if that makes me a sociopath. I have to intentionally imagine myself in the other person's situation to understand why they might be upset about something. For example when I heard about the student who was recently suspended for creating an N-word pass at school, I felt that those who were offended were just being overly sensitive. I only changed my mind after someone suggested imagining the same thing with a slur against my ethnicity. I just don't seem to empathize with people by default in most situations.
- dd36 8y agoA kid that hurts herself and is crying requires conscious empathy?
- anigbrowl 8y agoThe best clinical instrument for 'measuring' sociopathy is the Hare PCL-R, which tries to estimate both a person's tendency to engage in hostile interpersonal behavior and their attachment to social norms - you could think of it as the difference between actively murdering people vs. callously watching them die without helping. One can have a high score on one part of the scale and not on the other. Obviously this is far short of being an exact science. As for empathy, it might be an inherent quality but I'm inclined to think that it's like most other things, you can cultivate it with practice and it manifests different ways in different people.