Sociopath Community

No, you've said outright MULTIPLE times that sociopaths do no feel affective empathy. Period...

I experience affective empathy whenever I decide I want to. Usually when it is in my interest to do so. i.e. when I want to manipulate someone, it is in my interest to understand their emotions on a deep level. I do that through affective empathy.

I don't suffer from debilitating empathy, It isn't a hindrance, it's a capability... a tool I use to my benefit, just as it was evolutionarily intended to be.

You don't need affective empathy to manipulate someone. You only need to recognize what they're feeling, not feel it yourself.

If you have low cognitive empathy and can't recognize emotion very well without feeling it yourself, then I could understand while you would rely more on affective empathy for manipulative purposes. But if you have normal to high cognitive empathy, then why would you choose to feel what they're feeling, when it's unnecessary?

It's a play from the actors playbook. Genuine emotions can only be portrayed if you genuinely feel the emotions.  Without choosing to take them on, you cannot adequately express them. You can know in your mind all day, but until you internalize an emotion, it just comes off as fake...

We can, 'tis true! If we follow the example of our civic-minded leader, we will discover that deep down inside, we are sensitive, empathetic creatures. We should learn to mirror our good Queen!

All hail Queen Luna! Long live the Queen!

by Daddy

Good for you, someone spoon fed you're stupid ass the answer. But what does that do for you? It leaves you reliant on someone else to think for you, instead of doing it for yourself. Again this isn't about sensitivity. This about you being too stupid to figure out the difference between two English words.

Ok. Im trying to make sense of your logic. First you say.

"Why ask questions that you could easily find the answers to yourself with a little bit of looking? I'll give you the answer: You're a lazy fuck"

So that being said. There should be no asking of questions allowed in the forum.  Sense everyone can Google and find the answer themselfs ? Hmm. That sure takes the educational value out of being in a forum.

You are so smart. hahahaha

To bad you wasted all that time studying psychology. /pats you on the back and tells you. It will be ok.

Using Sherlock as your comparative example opens you up to this:



The show purposely tries to leave people wondering.


"It's a play from the actors playbook. Genuine emotions can only be portrayed if you genuinely feel the emotions.  Without choosing to take them on, you cannot adequately express them. You can know in your mind all day, but until you internalize an emotion, it just comes off as fake..."

Yep, method acting. You can get close to appearing genuine without it by spending hours practicing with a mirror, facial references, and a lot of time spent studying emotions, but method acting is a far easier way for most people that brings good results.

by Daddy

It's a play from the actors playbook. Genuine emotions can only be portrayed if you genuinely feel the emotions.  Without choosing to take them on, you cannot adequately express them. You can know in your mind all day, but until you internalize an emotion, it just comes off as fake...

Are you also implying that no socio/psychopath can convincingly manipulate someone without affective empathy? lol

Daddy, emotions can be faked very easily and convincingly. You only need to recognize how other people express their emotions to learn how to fake it yourself. If it was that hard to fake emotion convincely, there would be no good actors in the entertainment industry.

by Daddy

Ofcourse sociopaths don't feel empathy as often as the average person, they have it turned off by default and can control when they want to feel it.

by Daddy

Empathy is mostly a subconscious process that takes place in the older less evolved brain that deals with instantaneous responses (i.e. emotions such as fear) there is another more recently evolved part of us known as the pre-frontal cortex that deals with reason, logic and making sense of the signals sent by the less evolved parts. So basically we have two streams of thought reactionary instincts or emotions and logical processing.

Empathy is experienced subconsciously in most people and is often referred to as "intuition". It is the ability to see someones non-verbal communication patterns and intuit what they are feeling and then forwarded to the mirror neuron system which runs a similuation in your head like "I wonder what this feels like" so you feel it subjectively. (all of this happening in fractions of a second)

Again this is all subconscious.

 First, intuition is not affective empathy or vice versa. Your intuition helps you to forsee a certain outcome, or helps scientists to find out new stuff. I think you're really mixing things up here, you certainly don't seem to have a clear idea about the meaning of those terms.

by Daddy

I experience affective empathy whenever I decide I want to. Usually when it is in my interest to do so. i.e. when I want to manipulate someone, it is in my interest to understand their emotions on a deep level. I do that through affective empathy.

I don't suffer from debilitating empathy, It isn't a hindrance, it's a capability... a tool I use to my benefit, just as it was evolutionarily intended to be.

Such a predictable answer. So affective empathy is this subconscious thing, smth with which I agree because it just happens in my case, but you special snowflake can use it whenever you want. You're contradicting yourself Jay. It's more likely you just have a keener "mental" understanding of what other people are going through if you pay closer attention, if you're a sociopath with a certain interest to do so. In which case that's not really affective empathy, not even by your definition, since it's not unconscious if you get to decide when to use it.

Or you feel the real thing, and that happens independent of your will. And that's why I asked you this q which you avoided to answer for some reason.

by Edvard

I think you have to first hand experience both cognitive and emotional empathy to understand what each one means. Because they really are different. So tell me, was there any time you EMOTIONALLY empathized with someone? I mean actually feel sad when someone else was feeling sad. Or noticed someone in distress and FELT like helping them. Not that "I helped them because they could prove useful to me someday" or "I put myself in other people's shoes to manipulate them better muahaha" crap.

I think Daddy's confused. If his ability to emotionally empathize is as subconscious as he has claimed, then I doubt he has the control over it that he also claims to have.

subconscious (sʌbˈkɒnʃəs) adj

1. (Psychology) acting or existing without one's awareness

He's consciously aware that he's subconsciously aware of being consciously aware.