Autism and Empathy: Less Than Expected? A Study Uncovers Its True Complexity.

The widespread belief that autistic individuals lack empathy is increasingly challenged by scientific research. Recent studies provide a more nuanced understanding, revealing that empathy in autism is complex and manifests in diverse ways. A 2024 study specifically examined how empathy presents in autistic individuals, yielding surprising results.

Understanding Empathy

Empathy is generally defined as the capacity to understand and, at times, share the feelings of others. This involves a cognitive component—the ability to recognize and comprehend another person’s emotions—which is often linked to “Theory of Mind.” It also encompasses affective responses, though not necessarily adopting another’s problems as one’s own. Distinctions are often made between cognitive empathy (understanding what another person feels) and affective empathy (feeling with another person). Individuals typically combine both forms in varied ways.

The Study on Empathy in ASD

Previous scientific studies on autism and empathy have often oversimplified the issue by not clearly distinguishing between cognitive and affective empathy. This simplification led to the reductive conclusion that autistic individuals lacked empathy. To address this, a team of researchers investigated these gaps by examining the structure and psychometric properties of the Perth Empathy Scale. This tool allows for more precise measurement of both types of empathy and their relationship to pleasant and unpleasant emotions.

The study recruited 239 participants with autism and 690 neurotypical control individuals. All participants completed online questionnaires detailing their reactions to emotional situations. Beyond analyzing the scores, advanced statistical techniques were employed to verify if the internal structure of empathy (comprising cognitive, positive affective, and negative affective empathy factors) was consistent between the autistic and control groups. This analysis also provided insights into specific item functioning, correlations between empathy types, individual variability within each group, and the influence of factors like age and gender.

Key Research Findings

After an exhaustive analysis of the Perth Empathy Scale, researchers confirmed the tool’s validity, ensuring that comparisons between autistic and non-autistic individuals were accurate. The findings offered a more detailed view of empathy in autism.

Empathy Has Multiple Facets

The internal structure of empathy was found to be largely consistent in both autistic and neurotypical individuals. Both groups exhibited three complementary dimensions of empathy:

• Cognitive empathy: The ability to recognize and interpret what another person is feeling.
• Positive affective empathy: The tendency to share in others’ pleasant emotions.
• Negative affective empathy: The tendency to resonate with others’ unpleasant emotions.

This suggests that, structurally, empathy functions similarly in both groups, operating within a shared framework with individual variations rather than through entirely different systems.

Differences in Scores

On average, autistic individuals scored lower in both cognitive empathy (understanding others’ feelings) and affective empathy (sharing others’ feelings). However, the researchers emphasized that interpreting this solely as a deficit would be inaccurate due to significant internal variability within the autistic group. While some participants scored lower, others matched or even exceeded the scores of neurotypical participants. Additionally, the study observed that differences in cognitive empathy tended to increase with age, whereas differences in negative affective empathy decreased.

A New Perspective on Autistic Individuals?

This study offers crucial insights, deepening our understanding of the relationship between autism and empathy. It necessitates a revision of how we perceive this connection. Instead of labeling it as an “empathy deficit,” the authors propose the heterogeneity hypothesis of empathy in autism. This perspective suggests that there is no single pattern of empathy in autism; rather, each individual experiences and expresses emotional connection in a unique way, challenging previous, more uniform assumptions.