Meatware 99
TheJagged on Feb. 2, 2023
Based on RL research. Women score reliably higher on empathy tests all through the world. And there's 2 types of empathy actually, cognitive & affective/emotional. Cognitive means the logical side of empathy, where you can deduce how a person feels and act accordingly. While affective is involuntary, it literally makes you *feel* what others feel. Hence why sometimes seeing a sad face it will make you cry too, or watching someone get hurt will make you flinch.
The subject of empathy, how it works and what happens when it doesn't work right, is a recurring theme in my stories. Since my own empathetic response is pretty borked. My autistic brain is doing fine at cognitive empathy, but pretty trash at the affective side of it. Not that i'm incapable of feeling for others, quite the opposite, emotions tend to overwhelm me so much that my brain simply shortcircuits. Undestanding why that happens helps me cope with it. And makes me feel a little less like an alien dropped on the wrong planet. :'^)
PaulEberhardt at 11:26AM, Feb. 2, 2023
Yep, I've read that too. These results continue to provide fuel for the good old nature vs. nurture debate, and I'm not enough of an expert to take sides there, but it's a fascinating topic all the same. So is empathy on its own. I can tell you, there have been moments when I'd have liked to turn my empathy off, and others when I was glad I can't.