Why is emotional empathy so rare?
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Why is emotional empathy so rare?
What do you think, do they have an extra, unusual ability? Or maybe everyone had this ability long ago, but then most people lost in in the last 10000 years or so?
(Related might be the issue that also less than 5% or so of people can pick up the facial microexpressions of others.)
- mystery
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
It's about evolution, simple... the emotional empath male is softer and kinder together with much less greedy. its difficult to be greedy when you feel the pain of the one(s) that you're taking from.
greed is very attractive to women, who usually select a mate who is very confident and even greedy.
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emotional empath females are softer and kinder and more often accept a greedy man who is very assertive because of the softer kinder behaviour they get essentially run over and give in.
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emotional empath male is less likely to father any children.
emotional empath female is likely to be the mother of a child that has a father that is very greedy.
the chances to pass on this wonderful trait is low.
- LuckyR
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
Interesting topic. What is your understanding of the difference between a typical person who has the quality of empathy and an emotional empath?Atla wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 12:59 am Emotional empaths don't just feel their own emotions, but also automatically soak up the emotions of others around them like a sponge, and feel those emotions too through their own. It's estimated (it's also my experience) that less than 5% of people are emotional empaths. Often they don't even realize for a long time that most people don't have this ability. They can have a very different life experience than most humans, and can usually receive no guidence from anyone save maybe a few other empaths.
What do you think, do they have an extra, unusual ability? Or maybe everyone had this ability long ago, but then most people lost in in the last 10000 years or so?
(Related might be the issue that also less than 5% or so of people can pick up the facial microexpressions of others.)
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
Unfortunately emotional empathy has multiple meanings in use. Here I generally divide humanity into three groups:LuckyR wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 1:33 amInteresting topic. What is your understanding of the difference between a typical person who has the quality of empathy and an emotional empath?Atla wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 12:59 am Emotional empaths don't just feel their own emotions, but also automatically soak up the emotions of others around them like a sponge, and feel those emotions too through their own. It's estimated (it's also my experience) that less than 5% of people are emotional empaths. Often they don't even realize for a long time that most people don't have this ability. They can have a very different life experience than most humans, and can usually receive no guidence from anyone save maybe a few other empaths.
What do you think, do they have an extra, unusual ability? Or maybe everyone had this ability long ago, but then most people lost in in the last 10000 years or so?
(Related might be the issue that also less than 5% or so of people can pick up the facial microexpressions of others.)
- People who completely or almost completely lack emotional empathy (sociopaths, clinical narcissists, psychopaths with turned-off empathy circuits, some borderlines, secondary psychopaths etc.): they lack the ability, or were forced to learned not to, or choose not to perceive other humans as feeling beings. Say 5-10% of the population.
- "Normals", who have emotional empathy in the sense that they recognize others as feeling beeings. (Autistics typically also belong here, they just have technical problems with the recognition process.) Say 90% of the population.
- "Empaths", who have emotional empathy in the sense that they recognize others as feeling beeings, AND also feel the emotions of others through their own emotions. This is of course no superpower and no magic is involved, what they feel is based on what they percieve the other person to be feeling, so they can be terribly fooled sometimes. Say less than 5% of the population.
I had this little theory that the third group was the "normal" group long ago, but I'm not sure at all.
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
Agree, I'm wondering though if we've always been this greedy and emotional empathy has always been sort of abnormal, or maybe we've devolved to become more greedy by establishing a civilization, and lost our natural emotional empathy along the way? Maybe evolution went off course, to reach the present level of advancement faster.mystery wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 1:21 am very interesting question and directly in the path of evolution.
It's about evolution, simple... the emotional empath male is softer and kinder together with much less greedy. its difficult to be greedy when you feel the pain of the one(s) that you're taking from.
greed is very attractive to women, who usually select a mate who is very confident and even greedy.
--
emotional empath females are softer and kinder and more often accept a greedy man who is very assertive because of the softer kinder behaviour they get essentially run over and give in.
--
emotional empath male is less likely to father any children.
emotional empath female is likely to be the mother of a child that has a father that is very greedy.
the chances to pass on this wonderful trait is low.
- Sculptor1
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
"emotional empathy"? What other sorts are there?Atla wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 12:59 am Emotional empaths don't just feel their own emotions, but also automatically soak up the emotions of others around them like a sponge, and feel those emotions too through their own. It's estimated (it's also my experience) that less than 5% of people are emotional empaths. Often they don't even realize for a long time that most people don't have this ability. They can have a very different life experience than most humans, and can usually receive no guidence from anyone save maybe a few other empaths.
What do you think, do they have an extra, unusual ability? Or maybe everyone had this ability long ago, but then most people lost in in the last 10000 years or so?
(Related might be the issue that also less than 5% or so of people can pick up the facial microexpressions of others.)
There are a couple of problems with your assumtions here.
You do not present any evidence to support your idea that there is too little empathy.
You seem to be under the impression that there was more 10,000 years ago.
You have not said, nor justified what is the adequate or appropropriate level of empathy, nor any shown that it has changed historically.
But the worst of it is that you seem to have made your own category of human: "emotional empath", and decided that they represent 5%.
Did you just invent the term and the %age?
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
Off the top of my head, of the people I know well enough to be able to make a reasonable assessment, I can't think of any that lack all emotional empathy. Obviously the extent to which they empathize varies. As I said, it's a continuum. My step-daughter, for example, is very emotionally empathetic. The other day she burst into genuine tears when a guy on a TV quiz show got a question wrong and was clearly embarrassed. They're not all like that. But all have empathy for others to at least some extent. As seems to be the case more generally, it tends to be the women who have greater empathy than the men, but that's obviously not the same as saying that women have empathy and men don't. If it were somehow possible to quantify empathy, it would be a case of overlapping but not quite coinciding bell-curves.
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
Most of my experience in life has been that women's natural tendency to share in suffering rather than attempt to analyze potential solutions to problems is greater than that of men. That's not to necessarily say that one is somehow better or more worthy of praise than the other. It's just an observation of what seems to be the case.
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
Steve3007 wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 7:50 am I've read somewhere before the statistic that something like 5% of the population are psychopaths but I have never previously heard that less than 5% of people are emotionally empathetic. Obviously the degree to which we feel empathy with others is continuous, not discrete (i.e. it's not all or nothing), so it's difficult to work out what a statement like "95% of people don't feel emotional empathy" is actually supposed to mean (assuming it's not supposed to mean that 95% of the population are psychopaths), but anecdotally it seems false to me.
Off the top of my head, of the people I know well enough to be able to make a reasonable assessment, I can't think of any that lack all emotional empathy. Obviously the extent to which they empathize varies. As I said, it's a continuum. My step-daughter, for example, is very emotionally empathetic. The other day she burst into genuine tears when a guy on a TV quiz show got a question wrong and was clearly embarrassed. They're not all like that. But all have empathy for others to at least some extent. As seems to be the case more generally, it tends to be the women who have greater empathy than the men, but that's obviously not the same as saying that women have empathy and men don't. If it were somehow possible to quantify empathy, it would be a case of overlapping but not quite coinciding bell-curves.
Yes but that's not what the topic is about, see the OP and my further clarification to LuckyR.Steve3007 wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 8:05 am I think the differences that generally (but of course not always) tend to exist between women and men is interesting here. In my experience, women and men often treat the support of a distressed friend or relative quite differently. Men often tend to treat it as a problem to be solved. So they try to collect evidence and then work out and propose possible solutions to what they perceive to be the problem. Whereas women have more of a tendency to simply listen and share in the suffering. This was vividly illustrated over the past year or so when a friend of my partner/fiancee/wife (we got married recently) suffered a terrible family tragedy. The terrible nature of this tragedy meant that nobody who knew this friend, including me, could help but to feel very distressed about it. But it affected my wife very, very deeply and she has spent a lot of time with here friend simply being with her and showing her that, even though there is no possible solution to the tragedy and nothing that can make it go away, she is at least not suffering alone.
Most of my experience in life has been that women's natural tendency to share in suffering rather than attempt to analyze potential solutions to problems is greater than that of men. That's not to necessarily say that one is somehow better or more worthy of praise than the other. It's just an observation of what seems to be the case.
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
I got the impression, from the OP and from your comments to LuckyR, that the central theme of the topic was the thesis that about 90% of the population (what you refer to as "Normals") don't feel the emotions of others through their own emotions (i.e. don't empathize). All I really said was that that's not my experience. As I said, in my experience, almost everyone feels empathy to varying extents.Atla wrote:Yes but that's not what the topic is about, see the OP and my further clarification to LuckyR.
Was that impression wrong?
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
I'd say it was wrong, what "normals" feel to varying degrees is more like sympathy, they imagine what it would be like to be in the other person's shoes, and they feel something abut that. In the OP I was referring to the literal "empaths" who, in addition to the above, also automatically feel the emotions of others around them (even if they don't try to). Often they can't even tell their own emotions from the emotions of others.Steve3007 wrote: ↑August 29th, 2021, 8:20 amI got the impression, from the OP and from your comments to LuckyR, that the central theme of the topic was the thesis that about 90% of the population (what you refer to as "Normals") don't feel the emotions of others through their own emotions (i.e. don't empathize). All I really said was that that's not my experience. As I said, in my experience, almost everyone feels empathy to varying extents.Atla wrote:Yes but that's not what the topic is about, see the OP and my further clarification to LuckyR.
Was that impression wrong?
Saw some study suggesting that they are around 1-2% of the population, I believe there are more than that, but probably less than 10%.
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
- chewybrian
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
I think the reason so few people have it is that we don't usually nurture, reinforce or reward it. We learn objective ways to get what we want, but we spend near zero time in school learning about emotion. There is some lip service to caring or doing the right thing in the media, but it is more often about accomplishments or 'winning'. You're not likely to get a raise for being the one who cares the most.
What I am getting at is that we could change the level of empathy present in the population, to some extent, if we recognized its value and worked to encourage it. Allotting time in school for the study of philosophy and psychology would be one way to move the needle.
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Re: Why is emotional empathy so rare?
If it is true that there is less genuine empathy in modern societies then I suspect it probably is related to the way in which societies have developed from small village-like communities in which we know everybody and are quite closely related to most, to large societies where relationships are more transactional - the objective ways to get what we want that you mentioned there. If that's true, then I'm not sure how much allotting time to studying philosophy and psychology in school would help. I guess that might help up to understand why we lack empathy, but that's not the same as feeling it. It seems to me that a greater re-emphasis on personal relationships with family and friends would be a better solution. So, with that in mind, I'm going to get off here for a bit and see what my family are up to! (My wife's gone to London to visit her ex-father-in-law, my step-daughter is at a music festival and my oldest son is watching football with his friends, so that just leaves to youngest.)chewybrian wrote:I think the reason so few people have it is that we don't usually nurture, reinforce or reward it. We learn objective ways to get what we want, but we spend near zero time in school learning about emotion.
Incidentally, I've sometimes thought that slightly greater empathy could be encouraged here if we all posted photos of ourselves. Perhaps I'll suggest it in the lounge.
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