Hi, my name is Stephanie and today I want to talk to you about something called the double
empathy problem. You may have heard that autistic people lack empathy. This is actually something
I addressed pretty early on in my time on YouTube talking about autism, as well as in various videos
such as those for world autism awareness week in the past. One of the ways that professionals have
explained this going on is the idea of autistic people lacking theory of mind. Now, if you're
not sure what theory of mind is, I have a video on that that you can check out over here. We'll touch
on double empathy and theory of mind later on in the video, but let's start with what is the double
empathy problem? This concept was introduced in 2012 in a paper by Milton, and in that paper,
the concept of double empathy was defined as follows: the double empathy problem: a
disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors which becomes more marked
the wider the disjuncture in dispositional perceptions of the life world. Perceived as a
breach in the natural attitude of what constitutes social reality for non-autistic spectrum
people and yet an everyday and often traumatic experience for autistic people. So, basically,
you have two different people, these are those social actors, and they're coming at things from
different perceptions. They have different ways of thinking and viewing the world,
different views of what is normal, what is natural to them, etc. And when they interact, because they
have these very different perceptions of social reality and these different intuitive natures,
they kind of miss each other, if that makes sense. So, there's this, as they call it,
a disjuncture between the two in this social setting. The more different that these two
people are in their perceptions of the social reality or how they perceive things, whatever,
the more obvious that disconnect is going to be. This phenomenon is unsettling for both parties,
the non-autistic and the autistic person. However, the non-autistic person
doesn't see this happen a lot. This is strange. It is a breach in what they consider to be normal,
their normal social interactions and their social reality, and therefore, they can just assume that
it's a problem with the other person. That person, in this situation, being the autistic person.
In fact, perhaps that person just doesn't have empathy. Now, on the other hand, you have the
autistic person, who, again, is unsettled by this disconnect, however this keeps happening
over and over and over because they're interacting with people constantly who have a different social
reality or different perception and understanding of the world. So, they keep on getting blamed for
not having empathy, but yet in their perception, those people are not having empathy. So, it's very
confusing and distressing and can be traumatic for the autistic person. So, in this scenario,
we have two different people who have two different views of things and perceptions and
experiences with the world and what social things should be intuitively. And they both have empathy,
but these are different types of empathy, or empathy from their perspective, thus the
term double empathy. This person is expressing empathy in what they think is the right way,
and this person is expressing empathy in the way that they think is the right way, but because
these are not the same, they miss each other and it seems like the other person is not empathetic.
One study set out to measure how non-autistic people perceived autistic people. Basically,
they saw videos of an autistic person responding to a social greeting or something to that effect,
and there were two different studies. One was rating how favorably, how socially favorably
they felt about the autistic person, and the other one was on how readable they felt
the autistic person was. These studies found that non-autistic people found autistic people
hard to read and rated them less socially favorable overall. This is actually quite
interesting because we know that autistic people get confused by non-autistic people
in social situations, right? They just don't seem to make sense. However, it looks like
non-autistic people don't exactly get autistic people, either. These non-autistic people might
expect an autistic person to read their mind because they're used to other non-autistic people,
but they're not really good at reading the mind of or getting a good read on an autistic person,
because they're not used to interacting with them. So, it's kind of like these people have different,
as they put it, social realites. Since this appears to be going in both directions,
this kind of helps add validity to this concept of double empathy. Another study looked into
friendships and the autistic traits that each friend had. Now, if you're kind of confused about
the concept of someone not being autistic but having autistic traits, you might be interested
in the concept of broad autism phenotype. I have a video on that. You don't necessarily have to fall
under the broad autism phenotype to have autistic traits. Everybody has some autistic traits.
However, obviously, that doesn't make everyone autistic or everyone on the spectrum. So, this
study found that the more similar autistic traits that non-autistic people had in their friendships,
they had a perception of better friendship, deeper, more meaningful friendships with that
person. However, if they had autistic traits that were not similar, or say, someone had a lot less
autistic traits and they didn't match up well with the autistic traits of the other person, the wider
the gap there seemed to be between these friends. They didn't feel as close, etc. This study is also
interesting because these are not affected by the length of time or anything like that. So,
it was really measuring if these people are having autistic-like perceptions, and if they are similar
on that they seem to feel closer to each other, but if they are different on that, they don't feel
as close to each other. So, again, this concept of we're having this very different social reality
from autistic people and non-autistic people. So, within this conversation of double empathy,
we return to a theory of mind. A lot of people, when they discovered this idea of double empathy,
they were like, awesome. So, we don't lack theory of mind. We just have this double empathy problem,
and we have a different kind of empathy than non-autistic people, and they have
a different kind of empathy than we do. So, it's not that we lack theory of mind at all. How rude
of you to assume. But it's actually this double empathy thing. However, I do believe that I still
have issues with theory of mind, and I think it's important that we separate the concept of empathy
and theory of mind, and I'm not the only one who thinks this. Researchers have also been looking
into this concept. Now, if you don't know what theory of mind is, very simply, let's put it as
being able to take someone else's perspective. So, perspective-taking and empathy aren't necessarily
the same thing. A 2019 paper on dissociating empathy and theory of mind says the following:
The data show that empathy and perspective taking recruit distinct neural circuits and can be
discerned already during early and throughout adult development. Both capacities also vary
substantially between situations and people. Differences can be systematically related to
situational characteristics as well as personality traits and mental disorders. The clear distinction
of affect sharing from other social emotions like compassion and from cognitive perspective-taking,
argues for a clear-cut terminology to describe these constructs. In our view, this speaks against
using empathy as an umbrella term encompassing all affective and cognitive routes to understanding
others. Unifying the way we speak about these phenomena will help to further research on their
underlying mechanisms, psychopathological alterations, and plasticity in training
and therapy. Thus the abilities to empathically share others' affect and take their perspective
can be well differentiated conceptually and have more recently also been directly dissociated
on a neural network level. However, they may also interact and facilitate or impair one another in
complex situations that require both functions simultaneously. So, basically what we're seeing on
the neural level is that perspective taking, which encompasses most of the concept of theory of mind,
and empathy recruit different parts or different resources in the brain, which means they're not
exactly as same as some people might want to put it to be. You can lack theory of mind and still be
empathetic. However, it is important to note that in complex situations, theory of mind and empathy
can interact and affect each other both positively and negatively. So, it's not necessarily that they
completely exist without each other because they do interact at some points, however
that doesn't mean that lacking theory of mind actually means you lack empathy. On a personal
note, I believe that double empathy is a major issue because of the way that autistic people
can kind of take this to turn the tables on non-autistic people. So, for a very long time, of
course, it has been seen like the autistic person is just defective. They don't have empathy. They
they just don't get it, and they're wrong, and they're messed up, and it's all their fault
while that autistic person is experiencing a lack of empathy from those around them. And
so once they realize, wait a minute, I do have empathy. You're showing me a lack of empathy.
You're the bad guy. You're actually what's messed up, and you're actually what's wrong. And so this
leads to this kind of demonization of non-autistic people, or specifically neurotypical people,
and this kind of concept of like, well, you know, you're, you haven't been empathetic to me. I have
empathy. You just see my empathy wrong, and you just aren't empathetic, and I can't believe that
you'd this and you that, and it just feeds that us versus them that has really seemed to become
super prevalent the more we get into this conversation about different neurotypes.
It's basically like bashing neurotypicals about how awful they are so that they can other them the
way that the autistic people have been othered by non-autistic people. So, instead of finding
out about these differences to be able to bridge the gap, a lot of people use it to widen the gap,
to be able to say, aha! You know, this is our difference, and instead of me feeling bad,
now I'm going to make you feel bad. And really that's not that constructive. Of course,
it's great that you don't feel bad for having a different form of empathy or having a different
social reality as was put in the paper. However, I don't know that it really makes it better to try
to other neurotypicals or non-autistic people and demonize them as these horrible people.
Just like autistic people, they are individuals. And I know I used to say this a whole lot on my
channel, but let's let's go back to this concept: people are individuals. They are all unique and
special and different, autistic, non-autistic, neurotypical, neurodivergent in other ways, each
person is different and unique and it's really not fair to other someone because of their neurotype,
whether it's because they're neurotypical or because they're neurodivergent. While I don't
have all the answers on how to bridge this us versus them problem that appears often,
I would encourage people to not use the moments that they might find opportunity to other people
and instead try to build understanding. Instead of pointing the finger and saying you're ableist
and don't you understand that this is the whole thing with double empathy and blah, blah, blah,
instead of getting angry that people have found deficits in you, help them understand.
Help them understand the differences. And sure, you understand that they have deficits, too, but
it's not your job to rub it in their face just as much as you wouldn't want them to rub it in yours.
I hope that makes sense. I hope that you kind of get the concept of double empathy, what this
is, why it's important for autistic people, and why maybe we need to be careful about trying to
weaponize new information to kind of turn the tables on past situations and past things that
have happened to the community and to individuals as well. If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and
give it a thumbs up, and let me know all of your thoughts in the comments below. Did you know what
double empathy was? Did you kind of think this concept existed anyway? Do you agree that theory
of mind should be separated from empathy? And what are your thoughts on all of this? I just want to
know. Put it in the comments below. If you are interested in autism related topics from me, you
can go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I try to get videos out every Thursday at 4 p.m. central
standard time, except for the last Thursday of the month where I try to do live streams with you all.
Thank you to everyone who supports me here on YouTube as YouTube members, my patrons over
on Patreon, and a special thank you to my spaz tier patron, Philip Noah. Thank you so much for
watching. I hope you're having a wonderful week, and I will see you in my next video.
Bye!