How is empathy advantageous?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@KimJongUn

As someone diagnosed with ASPD and somewhat interested in the disorder, I sometimes wonder how empathy is advantageous to a human being, mainly because of the fact that empathy can bog you down with such things as the suffering of others, which does not affect you.

I am not a psychologist but empathy has several advantages I can think o off the bat.

Empathy helps you communicate with others. Just like talking in person improves communication over talking over the phone because it provides visual cues and talking over the phone improves communication over texting because it provides auditory cues. Empathy allows you to pick up on another set of cues in and improves your ability to understand others.

Empathy helps you predict behavior. Empathy allows you to put yourself in other people’s shoes and predict how they may react. It is a combination of telepathy and futuresight, a very very mild form but the ability to predict he future and read other people’s minds seems like a pretty big advantage even if the effect is mild.

The ability to feel sad for others also allows you to feel happy for others. This may seem like a wash but empathy makes it easier to create and maintain relationships that allow you to trust others and for others to trust you.

Short story: Korean entrepreneurs. There are many reasons why Korean entrepreneurs are successful. Among those reasons is the prevalence of the use of kye among Korean businessowners (Rotating savings and credit association - Wikipedia). A lack of empathy interferes with your ability to participate in kye and have access to the extra financial flexibility that kye provides. There are all sorts of benefits associated with being able to navigate social situations without seeming like a sociopath.

[msmith537]

@Turpentine

It’s worth mentioning that the most successful sociopaths are the ones who can at least fake empathy when talking to others. It’s easier to exploit people when they like you.

A person with ASPD is often more off-putting to others than a charming psychopath, so their lac of empathy doesn’t benefit them as much as a psychopath who at least is familiar with the rules of society and superficially abides by them.

A remember an old episode of News Radio where Phil Hartman’s character was going around pretending to be nice and likeable (instead of being his usual jerky self). He became very alarmed and distressed when he found that after doing it long enough, he was starting to ACTUALLY become nice and likeable and couldn’t tell when he was faking anymore.