What does it mean to have a lack of empathy? [Examples and Hypotheticals welcome]
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There are basically two ways it can work. You might have trouble telling how somebody else is feeling, or you might not care how another person is feeling.
A blind person couldn’t get visual cues from somebody’s body language that might tell them how that person is feeling. A deaf person might not be able to hear you if you were talking to them about how you’re feeling. An autistic person might have trouble understanding things like body language or tone of voice, so wouldn’t pick up those cues about how somebody is feeling. But once those people knew how you were feeling, they would care how you feel, and not want to make you feel bad.
The other way you can lack empathy is if you know how somebody else is feeling, but you don’t care. A psychopath would fall into this category. Or it might be somebody who sees the other person as undeserving of sympathy for one reason or another. Maybe you believe that that person’s problems are the result of something they did wrong. Or maybe you think that certain types of people don’t experience emotions the way you do. Or you think the other person isn’t really feeling the emotion they seem to be- that they’re faking it. Here, you know how the other person is feeling, but you don’t care if you make them feel bad.
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