NeuroDiving

Amelia: Before we begin, I just want to let you know that this is our second episode about autism and empathy. I suggest that you listen to the previous episode before diving into this one.

Recap, plus some empathy myths

Amelia: Remember Ryan Althaus?

Ryan: I am a 38 year old, kind of wacky, uh, presbyterian-unitarian minister which is...that's theologically divergent, I guess.

Joanna: And remember how Ryan took a psych test, which told him that he had no empathy?

Ryan: It made a lot of sense. Um, I don't experience empathy in the way that most people do, or the dictionary definition of it.

Amelia: But did those test results make sense? I mean, Ryan sure seems like a generous, empathetic person. Should we trust a test that says he has no empathy?

Joanna: As we discussed last time, psychological tests that claim to measure empathy are blunt instruments with many limitations. Empathy seems complicated--it seems like the type of thing that different people experience differently. So, we shouldn't assume that these tests are perfect for measuring any given person's ability to empathize. But the reason we care about empathy--and the reason seminaries use these tests to try to measure the empathy of future ministers--is because we often think that having empathy is part of being a good person. We care about whether a person has empathy, because we generally assume that empathy is related to morality.

Amelia: There's a longstanding myth that autistic people, like Ryan, don't have empathy. This myth is largely based on the idea that autistic people have a deficit in theory of mind. The thinking is, basically, "how can autistic people have empathy if they can't understand other people's perspectives?" And this myth is really dangerous, because we associate empathy with morality. If autistic people have less empathy, and if empathy is crucial for being a good person, then it would follow that autistic people are less morally good.

Joanna: Obviously there are all sorts of problems with the myth that autistic people lack empathy. First of all, it just seems incorrect; if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you already know an empathetic autistic person! Second of all, as we've already discussed at length throughout this season, we don't have strong empirical support for the "theory of mind deficit" view of autism. And third, even if someone struggles with theory of mind, theory of mind isn't necessarily the same thing as empathy.

Amelia: My sense, though, is that the myth of the autistic empathy deficit is dying--but it's being replaced by a new myth. According to this new myth, autistic people experience empathy in the same way neurotypical people do, except that they have a deficit in theory of mind. This new myth is often supported by comparing autism with psychopathy.

Joanna: Now, psychopathy isn't an actual psychiatric diagnosis, but it's pretty much an extreme version of antisocial personality disorder, which is an actual diagnosis. According to this new myth, people who meet the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder are often excellent at perspective-taking, AKA theory of mind, but are also thought to be bad at caring about other people. Autistic people, on the other hand, are said to care deeply about other people, but are thought to struggle with perspective-taking. So, according to this new myth, autistic people and psychopaths are sort of opposites. And, when people hear this, they often jump to the conclusion that it's the psychopaths who are bad people, and that autistic people are just... confused about other people's minds.

Amelia: This new myth might sound better than the old myth that autistic people simply lack empathy. But we are... more than a little suspicious of this new myth, too. It really isn't obvious that this myth characterizes autism or psychopathy accurately! And in fact, there are people who self-identify as psychopaths who insist that their psychopathic impulses can be channeled into pro-social behavior--if that's correct, then this new myth unnecessarily demonizes people with antisocial personality disorder. Plus, this new myth requires us to draw a hard-and-fast line between thinking vs. feeling--because according to the new myth, psychopaths lack certain feelings whereas autistic people lack certain thoughts. This worries me a little, because thoughts and feelings are closely related to each other, and the line between a "thought" and a "feeling" is often really blurry.

Joanna: So we want to challenge these myths about autism and empathy, by complicating how we think about empathy. And once we have a more nuanced view of empathy on the table, we want to know whether it's actually related to morality.

Amelia: This is NeuroDiving, a philosophy podcast about neurodivergence. I'm Amelia Hicks.

Joanna: And I'm Joanna Lawson.

Amelia: In this episode, we explore what empathy is, and whether empathy is important for living a good life.

Types of empathy?

Joanna: When you start to research empathy, you quickly realize that there are many different kinds.

Amelia: There's theory of mind, of course, which is sometimes called cognitive empathy.

Joanna: Then there's affective empathy, which involves caring about other people's experiences.

Amelia: And of course there's emotional contagion, which is what happens when you "catch" feelings from the people you're interacting with.

Joanna: And then there's sympathy, which seems like a more abstract, further-removed type of concern for another person's situation.

Amelia: And sometimes people talk about compassionate empathy, which is concern for another person that actually motivates you to help them.

Joanna: We could go on! But is it actually useful to have a long list of different types of empathy? They all seem closely related to each other--and sometimes it might be really hard to distinguish them.

Amelia: These lists of different types of empathy make me wonder: what's the relationship between all these different types of empathy?

Empathy as a process

Joanna: So here's an alternative way of thinking about empathy. Maybe empathy is a process, which itself can involve a bunch of different cognitive and emotional processes.

Amelia: There's a short editorial by Sue Fletcher-Watson and Geoffrey Bird from 2020, in which they break down the empathy process into four main steps, and they explore how autistic people sometimes engage in this process differently.

Joanna: So, in a nutshell, here's that four-step empathy process. Step 1: you have to notice that another person is experiencing an emotion.

[SONAR NOISE]

Amelia: Fletcher-Watson and Bird point out that autistic people might sometimes struggle with Step 1. For example, if I'm in an intense sensory environment, my monotropic attention might make it difficult for me to keep track of what's going on with other people.

Joanna: Step 2: you need to identify the emotion the other person is experiencing.

[BELL NOISE]

Amelia: Step 2 can also be challenging for autistic people. Even if I notice that someone is experiencing an emotion, I might have a hard time figuring out what that emotion is. Facial expressions and social cues are complicated! Plus, as we discussed in previous episodes, alexithymia--which is when someone has a hard time identifying their own emotions--is pretty common among autistic people. And alexithymia can lead to difficulty identifying the emotions of other people.

Joanna: OK, so Step 1 is noticing that someone is having a feeling [SONAR NOISE], and Step 2 is identifying that feeling [BELL NOISE]. Now we get the super-important Step 3 in the empathy process: after you've identified another person's emotion, you have to share that emotion with them; you have to experience it (or something similar to it) yourself.

[HARMONIZING GUITAR PLUCK]

Amelia: Fletcher-Watson and Bird think that Step 3 is the most important step in the empathy process, and they point out that many autistic people are really good at sharing other people's emotions. In fact, many autistic people are so good at sharing other people's emotions that it becomes a bit of a problem! Ryan talked a bit about this type of experience in the previous episode.

Ryan: It's intense to the point of just debilitating. So it's, you know, it's kind of funny. It's because I've, I've never been able to look in people's eyes when I talk to them and so forth. Like, I've got the camera off right now and I'm not looking at the computer purposefully. Um, and that's not because, that's not because I don't feel empathy or I don't feel a connection or I'm confused by the connection. It's because the connection's so intense that it's too much, like, it's, it's too much emotion.

Joanna: OK, so, after you've noticed that someone is feeling a feeling, [SONAR NOISE] and then you identify that feeling, [BELL NOISE] and then you share that feeling with them, [HARMONIZING GUITAR PLUCKS] there's one fourth, final step in the empathy process: you need to respond to that person in a way that respects social norms related to the expression of empathy.

[VOICE: "WOULD YOU LIKE A HUG?"]

Amelia: So, the fourth and final step of the empathy process involves taking your experience of empathy, and turning it into an action. And the thing is, social norms will influence how that action gets interpreted. As many of you already know, autistic people sometimes don't notice or don't care that much about social norms. And as a result, we might sometimes express empathy in ways that violate social expectations.

Joanna: But according to Fletcher-Watson and Bird, the most important step in the empathy process is Step 3, which involves sharing other people's emotions. [HARMONIZING GUITAR PLUCKS] And this is something autistic people are often very good at. But autistic people might sometimes struggle with the other steps in the empathy process.

Amelia: So, I thought this editorial was really interesting, and I appreciate how the authors highlight the limitations of our current ways of measuring empathy, plus I appreciate that they discuss how the myth that autistic people lack empathy has harmed the autistic community. But I still wonder whether this way of thinking about empathy and autism still needs further work. Like, it might be too simplistic to say that autistic people do Step 3--sharing other people's feelings [HARMONIZING GUITAR PLUCKS]--in exactly the same way that neurotypical people do. Anecdotally, I've spoken with a bunch of autistic people who report unusually intense emotion-sharing, as well as autistic people who report that they don't share other people's emotions much at all. And in fact, even Ryan has a mix of both types of experiences.

Ryan: Um, when I was a kid I remember I would walk around and my parents used to just have to stop me because I would have to stop at every homeless person and give them everything I had, um, like it just it would hurt so bad to see this. But, but when I would hear stories of a homeless person, or a shooting, or a this or a that, none of it registered. Um, or when I was done and I'd passed by the individual, like, it didn't it didn't stick with me.

Amelia: But still, I really do appreciate that Fletcher-Watson and Bird are attempting to analyze empathy carefully, and in the process challenge the myth that autistic people lack empathy.

Introducing Heidi, and the complexity of empathy

Amelia: So I wonder: how can we grasp the complexity of empathy, so that we can better understand how different people empathize?

Joanna: A while back, we spoke with the philosopher Heidi Maibom, who has written a ton about empathy.

Heidi: *Chuckles* Renowned empathy expert! No, you could call me Heidi, that's just fine.... Well I'm, my name is Heidi Maibom, um, and I'm a professor of philosophy at the University Of Cincinnati and a distinguished professor at the University of the Basque Country.

Amelia: We spoke with Heidi during a heatwave while she was in Spain, so you might occasionally hear some fan-noise in the background.

Joanna: During our conversation, Heidi gave us a really helpful concrete example of just how complicated the empathy process can get, using a story from her own life.

Heidi: So my situation was, I went on a road trip with my friend Julie and my dog Warner, right? And one night we went to a lobster shack and I had a beer; I kind of wanted to have another beer but I was driving, you know, and so I was like, she was, she said, "Oh, have another beer I'll drive," which was great until she started driving, right? So we both, I mean, we both--this might be a little difficult in the American context--but we both drive stick, and you know that when you drive stick you have to change your gear at certain times. So she took the sort of tight narrow lanes in Maine in the fourth gear and I was like, "Nooo!"

And I got increasingly agitated, at a point I just blurted out, and I'm like, "Look, you need to downshift on the corners," you know? And then she's quiet for a little while and so I thought this was the right gear but then she downshifts and then of course I immediately start feeling bad, right? Here, she's doing me a favor and I'm shouting and I, you know, isn't this terrible. So I apologize and then she says to me, "It's okay, you know I was at first surprised but then I thought 'How would I feel if Timothy,'"--which is her husband--"'drove my car?'" And she said, "I would totally feel the same way." Notice, it looks like this is just projection, but it isn't, because if she had just projected herself into my situation, she would imagine sitting in my car next to herself driving my car. That wouldn't have done anything, right?

So she understands that it's because she is driving my car, right? That's important, but she also understands that a personal relationship is important because she was probably hurt because we're close friends. And so she imagines somebody that she's close to in a situation with a car that's related to her in the same way that my car is related to me. You see how complicated that is already in a relatively simple situation? So I think that needs to be recognized, that is, that it's a complex process.

Amelia: So it seems like empathy becomes an even more complex process in real-world situations, because it involves thinking about personal relationships, and comparing those personal relationships, and projecting yourself into another person's shoes, as well as simulating another person's emotions... it's a lot! The 4-Step process we described earlier might be a helpful simplification for understanding how empathy works. But according to Heidi, empathy is not just a simple 4-step process. For Heidi, empathy involves a cluster of skills that allow us to engage in interpersonal negotiations. Those interpersonal negotiations are highly context-specific, and so there's no simple set of rules you can follow. According to Heidi, empathy is an important set of skills that allows you to navigate the choppy waters of all these confusing interactions with other people.

Joanna: So, we have this very complex process, and it's totally possible that autistic people tend to engage in that process differently, using different cognitive and emotional strategies. But that doesn't entail that autistic people have a deficit when it comes to empathy. After all, no one fully and accurately shares another person's emotions. Every single person's empathy process is imperfect. I don't know if we should even want anyone's empathy to be 'perfect' in that way. Like, if my friend is screaming in pain because of a broken leg, empathy is a good thing to have, but perfect empathy would be... excruciating! Perfect empathy wouldn't be helpful, because I want to be able to respond and go get help in ways that my friend can't!

Amelia: Plus, there's more than one way to understand what someone else is going through. I'm thinking about Ryan's "experiments in living," like when he wanted to learn more about homelessness.

Ryan: So yeah, empathy was an interesting thing. And I kind of explored it later, uh, because I started to realize that it was like this experiential thing--empathy--and I needed to kind of feel these feelings. So, I wanted to learn more about homelessness. So I've lived--on 3 different occasions--I've lived homeless for a stint of time to figure out what it feels like to be homeless.

Amelia: Obviously choosing to live without shelter didn't give Ryan a perfectly accurate window into the experience of being homeless. But neither does "imagining" what it would be like to be homeless. And even if you yourself have been homeless, your experience doesn't automatically allow you to access another person's experience of homelessness. When it comes to sharing other people's experiences and emotions, it seems like we're all working with imperfect strategies. And that's why I feel so skeptical of the idea that Ryan's style of empathizing is a sign of any kind of deficit.

Joanna: Now, there really are people--both autistic and non-autistic--who struggle with many of the steps in the empathy process, to the point that it might make sense to say that they "lack empathy." But I also think it's also important to look at empathy from a developmental perspective. Babies aren't born with empathy--humans develop empathy over time, as their brains develop, and as they practice certain types of behavior. And even people who are on a different developmental trajectory can learn all sorts of empathy skills.

Amelia: This is super interesting, and I really hope that psychologists do even more research on this. In particular, dialectical behavioral therapy--or DBT--is often touted as helping people flex their empathy muscles--but at this point, we don't actually have a ton of research on whether DBT is helpful for autistic people. Plus, there are many different therapeutic techniques that all get called "DBT," and some of those techniques might not be so helpful. So, there's a lot more research to be done here.

Joanna: In any case, instead of condemning some people as "unempathetic," as if they're incapable of ever learning new skills, maybe we need to spend some more time understanding how everyone can continuously improve their ability to empathize, by building up the skills required for this super complex empathy process. This is yet another reason why, when it comes to understanding empathy, it isn't always helpful to compare autism with psychopathy--those comparisons often ignore how humans can develop a variety of empathy-related skills over time.

In defense of empathy

Amelia: So, we've been thinking about empathy as a process, which combines perspective-taking, emotional responsiveness, and practical decision-making. And when you describe empathy in this way, it sounds like a pretty amazing skill to have!

Joanna: But remember, there are many people who are skeptical of empathy's importance. In fact, Ryan is one of those skeptics! Remember how he said,

Ryan: I think a lot of times if you function solely off empathy, like, you're doing good for the sake of making yourself feel good almost.

Amelia: That's Ryan pointing out that there's something a little bit selfish about empathy---it's like, when you act out of empathy, you're kind of trying to make yourself feel good, too. But that's not his only criticism of empathy.

Ryan: ... a lot of times I think empathy is a showy thing too, I hate to say, like.... It's even a little ego. It's like, are we doing empathy work to be seen doing empathy work? To be, to feel good about ourselves? Um, or are we doing it because it needs to be done?

Joanna: Ryan worries that when we act on empathy, we're often putting on an act so that we can feel good about ourselves, and look good in front of other people. And there are even more ways that empathy can backfire.

Ryan: And I think the other way it can backfire is you stop taking care of yourself. And that's where we're seeing, like, healthcare professionals burning out or any number of things. It's like, you become too empathetic, you function too much off empathy and you forget, you forget to take care of yourself.

Amelia: Even if you manage to act out of genuine empathy, you can lose yourself---you can get so wrapped up in other people's needs and feelings that you forget about your own needs and feelings.

Joanna: These are just a few of the common criticisms lodged against empathy. Other empathy skeptics, like the psychologist Paul Bloom, point out that empathy is often biased, because you're more likely to feel empathy for someone who's similar to yourself.

Amelia: But Heidi---the philosopher you heard from earlier---thinks that empathy is actually really important. In her view, empathy is an imperfect, but still crucial tool for living in moral community with other people. And she worries that the empathy skeptics are too quick to dismiss the role of empathy in living a moral life.

Heidi: Of course there are shortcomings to all of these things when people have widely diverging experiences. What I don't like about a lot of the current debate is that people tend to over focus on that, as if, like, "okay we can't always get it right, so therefore, you know, it must be this pretty shitty tool." And I think "No, it's a massively useful tool, it's the best that we have, but we shouldn't let that blind us from differences, and we certainly shouldn't say, like, "Well, when I look at your situation, this is how I feel so I'm going to invalidate your emotion," right? That's, that's not the way to use it....

I think that a lot of the talk of empathy seems to assume that if empathy is any good, it has to be always good. And if you think of it that way, that's clearly absurd. But if you look at a lot of the objections to empathy, that's exactly what they are. "[Gasp] Oh, and you can use empathy in this situation and no oh now look that's bad." ... Nobody's perfect, right? But empathy's extremely valuable for a whole range of things. So that I think is the most important thing, and I don't think I can stress it enough because I feel like I see it all the time, right? That it's like, "Oh, here are the dark sides of empathy, etc." Yeah, great. You need to be aware of it. But what it's now used as is, like, this massive backlash against empathy and I'm, like, I don't think that that is at all, um, justified.

Heidi: So I think that kind of ability that we do want to develop in ourselves greater, also puts us at risk....I don't think that should scare us away entirely, you just need to, to understand that and to find good ways of, sort of, getting some, you know, reality checks.

Joanna: So, Heidi knows that empathy is potentially dangerous. But she still thinks empathy is crucial for living well.

Heidi: But I also think that empathy enthusiasts, such as myself, we don't want to claim, "Oh all, you need to do is just, you just need more empathy. That's it. Don't use reason, don't use any universal principle, just empathize away." You know that, that, I don't think that can be the idea, right? Empathy plays a hugely important role, etc. But also empathy with different people, right? So..., you can take the perspective of yourself and the perspective of the other and compare. And maybe even take the perspective of an uninvolved observer of that, so to triangulate, right? So that would come closer to what you suggested was this more deliberative empathy, right? And so I think it all depends a little bit on the situation. But particularly if you're thinking about the moral situation when it gets complicated. Like, ...if you have two people who are in a fundamental conflict or two groups that are in a fundamental conflict, right? Then, now taking the perspective of one, then the other, and then seeing it from the outside; I think that's the way to solve the situation. And I think what we're often told is, like, when, if you empathize with one you will only empathize with the one. And then the other one, you know, god help them, right? Because now we're poised against them. And so, and so I think that, you know, having a more nuanced idea of how you use empathy in these situations is really quite, um, quite important.

Amelia: I really like that phrase "deliberative empathy"---it suggests that we need to reflect on our empathetic experiences in order to guard against some of the dangers of empathy.

Joanna: Right. And part of the reason that Heidi thinks empathy is so important for living a morally good life is because she thinks that morality is way more complicated than following a simple set of rules.

Heidi: I think that there is a tendency often in culture, but also amongst philosophers sometimes, to think of morality as this abstract structure that's built into the universe and so we talk about MORALITY and then we need to figure how we can apply it better to these people that it just happens to be applicable to. Now it seems to me that morality is something that we, it's, it's a system that we put in play to work with other people, with other particular people, so that we can live together in a relatively harmonious and well-functioning way. Where we're not interfering overly with each other, but we're also helping and supporting each other. That comes down to an interpersonal negotiation between people. It's not like we're looking into nature, looking for some ideal, you know, "Here are the ten commandments. Oh great, here are some stones!" Right? No! It's in the interpersonal relationship with others, right? And I think so much of the time, when people do good things to other people, it's not like, "What would be the moral norm or the precept that it falls under?" Like, who knows? But it's a right kind of sensitivity to what matters to the other person and a recognition of that....

But you also have to consider, of course, that one of the things that empathy does is that it points us to situations that are morally relevant, right? And I think that the problem with trying to be a good human being is that moral situations do not come with a big blinking label, "MORAL SITUATION, MORAL SITUATION, ALERT, ALERT, WOO!" you know, right? No! We just bumble through life, and then sometimes at night we think, "Oh, maybe I should have, like, maybe that person, you know, this, that, and the other," right? What we really want to do is to be sensitive in the situation, to see, "Oh, this is a situation in which I should engage or, or this, that, and the other," right? So, so I think that that's where the less abstract forms of empathy can be very helpful.

Amelia: Okay, so it sounds like Heidi is saying that empathy is useful for recognizing when you're in a situation that requires moral thinking. And that skill for recognizing moral situations is really important if you think that living a moral life is more complicated than just following a simple set of rules.

Joanna: Yeah, it's like, if you don't empathize with other people, it can be difficult to know when you have a moral decision to make in the first place! Plus, when you have a moral decision to make, empathy can help you appreciate the various factors that should influence your decision. And on top of all that, Heidi thinks that empathy is useful for reflecting on your own actions. She described this idea using an example from the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre:

Heidi: I love the example that Jean-Paul Sartre gives in Being and Nothingness where he says, "Imagine that you're standing on the other side of a door, peering through a keyhole, right? To see into what's happening in this room, right? Imagine, for instance, it's your lover in there with another person, right? So as far as you're concerned, you are just gathering important intel, right? That's it. That's what you're doing. Then you hear a noise down the hallway, and as you hear that noise you shift your perspective and you see yourself as you imagine the other person would see you," or I think more precisely "as you would see yourself were you coming down the hallway." And then you think, "Oh my god, I'm a peeping Tom!" right? And I think that ability is absolutely central in being a moral agent....

Amelia: And on top of that, Heidi thinks empathy is important for acknowledging the full value of other people.

Heidi: I think that for me now, though, where I think empathy is especially important, I think it's especially important in interpersonal recognition. So, recognizing the other person as another I, and recognizing yourself as another you.

Joanna: So it's like, in order to live in moral community with other people, Heidi thinks I need to understand that other people have the same type of value I have; and in order to understand that, it helps to grasp that other people have their own subjective experiences.

Amelia: But what does Heidi say in response to the worry that empathy is biased? If I tend to empathize more with people who are similar to me, isn't empathy kind of bad?

Joanna: Well, bias is a potential danger. But Heidi points out that being totally objective isn't possible; so even if you don't have empathy, you're never going to be perfectly "objective." In fact, Heidi sees empathy as a tool for becoming less biased---if you reflect carefully on your experience of empathy.

Heidi: And the last one of course is that empathy's biased, right? That's the classical one. So, you know, "We empathize with one person, and then we come to see things in this bizarrely biased way. Instead, we should just be objective." Okay, that's great. "So if empathizing with somebody else makes us biased because they have this particular way of viewing the world, then we should just stick with our own way of viewing the world!" No, right? Because if that's the way that you look at others, you're presumably assuming that everybody is biased in their own way, which means you're already biased! So how do you get beyond that bias? Well, um, one suggestion of course, that people have, you want to go to the "view from nowhere," right? You just chop off everything that's subjective. My suggestion is, once you chop off everything that's subjective, do you have anything left that matters in morality? Like, do you really want that morality to reign, like if there were such a morality? Like, I don't know! Like, I mean, [chuckles] that seems pretty fishy to me!...

What we need is to take more perspectives. Already by taking another person's perspective, you're already better off than you were before, because now we have two, right? And notice, the idea isn't--and I think sometimes that seems to be the idea--if you take another person's perspective then you're stuck in that perspective: "Wah, you can't get out! Noo!" [chuckles] No, right? You take it, then you return to your own, and now you have more to work with....

And so, I think it's exactly the opposite of what people are saying. Empathy does not make us more biased, it actually makes us less. But,... I mean, I think we understand that we have biases intellectually, but it just doesn't seem so when we're right here. It's like "Well I'm seeing the coffee pot is here, and I'm having all these experiences. And of course, you know, I like, have direct access to the world!" That's the illusion that we're living in, um.... [J]ust to... represent things as they are in themselves and then you start thinking about "Oh, how would this thing-in-itself influence me and my well-being? How would I intera--?" No! No! It's exactly the other way around, right? We come to the world as users of the world, as people who interact with it, etc. And so we tend to see it in that way. Which means that we have a massively human, first of all, like, way of seeing things, right? But also egocentric, right? And so how do we get less of that? Well, we get, in a certain sense, we get more of it by taking other people's perspectives and seeing how that differs, right? And that then helps us create a fuller, less biased view of the world.

Amelia: Wow, okay, so it sounds like Heidi thinks that empathy is important for many things, including recognizing when you have a moral decision in front of you, appreciating the various factors that should go into that decision, reflecting on your own actions, fully recognizing the value of other people, and even making yourself less biased.

Joanna: Yeah, and even though the empathy skeptics have identified problems with empathy, Heidi thinks empathy is still a really important skill, which helps you live better with other people.

Amelia: Speaking of empathy skeptics, I'd like to tie this all back to Ryan, and his unusual experiences of empathy.

Ryan: Um, I don't experience empathy in the way that most people do, or the dictionary definition of it. Um, it's like, like when I move away from a place, I don't miss anybody. Um. Everything's just the present. It's who's around me at the time.

Amelia: Ryan realizes that he experiences empathy differently than many people. Would Heidi say that this is bad for Ryan? Like, would she say that those of us who experience empathy differently are living morally worse lives?

Joanna: No, I don't think Heidi would necessarily say that. I think Heidi thinks that empathy is a very complex process, which can work differently in different situations. That process is crucial for thinking through moral decisions, reflecting on your own actions, and recognizing that other people are people just like you. But that doesn't mean that everyone has to "do" empathy in the exact same way all the time. In fact, the sheer complexity of the empathy process opens up many possible ways of practicing and engaging in that process.

Conclusion

Amelia: We've already mentioned that one potential problem with empathy is that it's biased, because it's easier to feel empathy for people who are similar to you. But Heidi suggests that if we cultivate our empathic responses carefully, and if we use those responses to reflect on our decision-making, empathy can, potentially, help us bridge differences. And all of this makes me wonder if working on empathy could help non-autistic people better understand the experiences of autistic people.

Joanna: Yeah, there's kind of irony in the fact that autistic people are often characterized as lacking empathy, while at the same time many autistic people report feeling like non-autistic people never even try to empathize with them.

Amelia: We know from social scientists--and just from talking to autistic people--that non-autistic people tend to make negative snap judgments about autistic people. And we know that autistic people often suffer from bullying and manipulation, beginning in childhood but often continuing into adulthood.

Joanna: This might sound weird, but I think that one of my main takeaways from our whole conversation about empathy is not so much about Ryan, or about neurodivergent people, but rather about non-autistic people, especially neurotypical people. I feel like most non-autistic people need to do a lot better at realizing both the limits and the strengths of our own empathy "muscles." And in particular, you know what non-autistic people need to do better at? Realizing that we are bad at empathizing with autistic individuals. We need to realize that we are doing something wrong when we don't even wonder what it might be like to feel and think differently.

Amelia: And I'm sure that the myth of the autistic empathy deficit doesn't help! Like, it would be pretty difficult to empathize with someone while believing that that person lacks empathy.

Joanna: So, maybe a first step towards helping non-autistic people develop empathy for autistic people is recognizing the complexity of the empathy process, and recognizing that people can "practice" empathy in different ways. It's kind of like with theory of mind; it seems like both quick-and-intuitive perspective-taking and slow-and-deliberate perspective-taking could be useful, and both could count as having "theory of mind."

Amelia: And even though having empathy is important for living well with other people, there are still a bunch of different ways of experiencing empathy. I think this is important, because I sometimes feel like people--especially neurodivergent people--beat ourselves up for not having the quote-unquote "correct" emotional responses to things. It can be pretty scary to feel like our emotions are always wrong, or inappropriate. But, this whole conversation makes me think that maybe we shouldn't judge our immediate emotional reactions as right or wrong, when it comes to empathy; it seems like the really valuable forms of empathy depend on how we choose to act after our emotional reactions, and how we choose to cultivate our emotional reactions over time.

Ryan: So, so yeah. I mean, I think, but, but I think everybody does have empathy. Just in different ways.

Credits

Amelia: Thanks for listening to NeuroDiving. This episode was written, hosted, and produced by me and Joanna Lawson.

Many thanks to Heidi Maibom for helping us think through just how complicated empathy can get. Heidi's research spans across moral philosophy, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind. You can find links to her work in our show notes.

And thanks again to Ryan Althaus for sharing his many insights with us. Don't forget to check out Ryan's books and articles, which are also linked in our show notes.

I kind of can't believe it, but this is the end of NeuroDiving's first season! And boy oh boy do we have some cool plans in store for season 2 (eventually). Because Joanna and I work a lot and we make this podcast in our non-existent "free time," it's going to take us a while to produce a second season. But you can rest assured that, slowly but surely, we're working on it.

And of course: thank you to the Marc Sanders Foundation and the Templeton Foundation for their support of the show.