Autism: No Empathy? (Narcissism Summaries Channel)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-28

[00:00:04]What better way to open the week than with some Vaknin?

[00:00:09]>> [laughter] >> Glorious Monday to all of you, Shoshanim and Shoshanot.

[00:00:17]And today, I'm going to embark on a mission impossible to make myself even a bigger hate figure than I already am.

[00:00:31]And I'm going to do this by referring to scientific studies that prove, repeatedly, over at least 10 years, that, number one, people on the autism spectrum disorder lack empathy, exactly like narcissists and psychopaths. And yes, of course, I've been saying it for many years.

[00:00:55]Number two, so-called empaths are actually narcissists and psychopaths who engage in deceptive virtue signaling. And yes, of course, I've been saying this also for many years.

[00:01:10]>> [laughter] >> But now, I'm adding to a corpus of [snorts] videos that I've already made with two new additional studies. There are dozens by now, but two new additional studies. I do recommend that you watch my recent video about victimhood, competitive victimhood.

[00:01:32]And my previous videos about autism spectrum disorder compared to cluster B personality disorders, especially high-functioning uh autis- autism spectrum disorders.

[00:01:44]Okay, got the picture?

[00:01:48]I wish you a bumpy ride, and let us delve right into what I I to tell you.

[00:01:57]Okay, there's this new study.

[00:02:00]It's authored by Vantrigg.

[00:02:03]t r i g g t Colonnesi, Jørgensen, Nikolić, and others. It is titled Autistic Traits and Self-Conscious Emotions in Early Childhood. It was published in Childhood Development recently.

[00:02:20]A few weeks ago.

[00:02:21]I'm going to read to you from the abstract.

[00:02:23]Self-conscious emotions arise from evaluating the self through the eyes of other people.

[00:02:30]Given that children with autistic traits may experience difficulties with understanding other people's minds, they might show less attuned self-conscious emotions.

[00:02:44]So, self-conscious emotions include guilt, embarrassment, and and shame, and so on and so forth.

[00:02:50]Shame leads sometimes to avoidance and sometimes to other reactions.

[00:02:57]So, there was this experiment, and in the experiment, the experimenter pretended that the kids broke his toy. The experimenter was playing with the toy, and then he said to the kids, "Oh my god, you broke my toy." He shamed them and named them.

[00:03:16]And so, there was data. The experiment lasted um almost a year and a half and was repeated very often.

[00:03:26]Here are the conclusions in the abstract.

[00:03:29]Children with more autistic traits showed less theory of mind.

[00:03:36]>> [clears throat] >> Theory of mind is the long phrase for mentalization, the ability to perceive or conceive of other people's minds and what makes them tick.

[00:03:50]Okay, so children with more autistic traits showed less theory of mind and more shame-like avoidance.

[00:03:57]But associations were not mediated by theory of mind. In other words, the children's tendency to avoid shame were not the outcome of their inability to perceive other people's minds.

[00:04:12]This provides, say the authors, this provides initial evidence that children with more autistic traits may show disturbances in some, but not all, self-conscious emotions which could hinder their social functioning.

[00:04:26]Nothing new here.

[00:04:28]This has been established in numerous studies in the past, but never with young young young children, like 2 years old, 3 years old, 4 years old. All the previous studies uh were conducted on adolescents and adults, not on and and on children, but like 9-year-old children, 8-year-old [clears throat] children, not 2- and 3- and 4-year-old children.

[00:04:52]So, what the researchers in this particular experiment have done, they wanted to find out whether autistic traits are associated with a deficit in theory of mind, whether autistic traits make render the child incapable of understanding other people's mental states and predicting their behaviors.

[00:05:14]And whether deficits in the theory of mind, deficits in mentalization, are related to the experience of self-conscious emotions, with emphasis on shame-like avoidance.

[00:05:26]Remember, conscious self-conscious emotions include guilt, include many elements of empathy. Actually, one could say that self-conscious emotions are the foundation of empathy. Empathy is predicated on self-conscious emotions, like guilt and shame and embarrassment and so on and so forth. If you lack these emotions, you're extremely unlikely to have emotional empathy. You may be able to have what I call cold empathy, which includes reflexive or instinctual empathy, and cognitive empathy, but you will never have full-fledged empathy because you must have to In order for you to have a full-fledged empathy, you must have an emotional component. Autistic children seem to be unable to conceive of other people and their emotions and so on and so forth.

[00:06:24]The results of this study show that children with higher level of autistic traits did demonstrate a clear deficit in their ability to perceive other people's mental states. In other words, in their ability to empathize.

[00:06:39]In their ability to construct a theory of mind.

[00:06:43]Additionally, autistic traits were positively associated in the study with verbal shame-like avoidance. I will explain the I'll explain this in a minute.

[00:06:53]Now, there is definitely a need.

[00:06:57]There was a lacuna. There was a need to understand or conceptualize the relationship between autistic traits and self-conscious emotions in very, very young children because that's where it all starts, [snorts] the formative years.

[00:07:14]Astoundingly, no one studied the formative years in in autism spectrum disorders when it comes to guilt and shame and empathy and avoidance and so on. Critical features of the formative years.

[00:07:29]Self-conscious emotions, such as guilt, embarrassment, and shame, play a crucial role in social interactions.

[00:07:36]They motivate prosocial behaviors or when they are absent, they inhibit prosocial behavior.

[00:07:45]When people transgress, when they misbehave, when they act out or they when they break mores and rules of conduct and conventions and norms, when they act non-normatively, when people transgress, self-conscious emotions are automatically triggered.

[00:08:06]And they are known colloquially as conscience, actually.

[00:08:10]So, when you when you do something bad, when you do something you shouldn't have shouldn't have done, and then you feel shame, you're not likely to repeat it. Or you feel guilty, you're likely to offer some amends or try to make amends or somehow recompense or So, these emotions, self-conscious emotions are the ones that regulate and maintain social relationships and minimize transgression transgressions, misconduct, misbehavior via form of disinhibition and negative reinforcement.

[00:08:47]So, previous research has conclusively demonstrated disturbances in self-conscious emotions in older children and in adults with autism spectrum disorders. This is beyond debate. I'm sorry to tell you this.

[00:09:03]Older children above the age of six and adults with autism spectrum disorder lack empathy. They have extreme deficits or deficiencies in empathy. They are comparable to some types of borderline personality disorder and even narcissistic style or narcissism.

[00:09:25]This is known. This is not debatable anymore.

[00:09:29]It may not be palatable. It's not politically correct. And everyone online present themselves as victims and perfect and beyond reproach and empathic and loving and caring.

[00:09:43]That's online hype and BS.

[00:09:47]Psychology is merciless because it pursues the truth.

[00:09:52]The truth is often inconvenient to quote Al Gore. Okay?

[00:09:59]But what we didn't know is whether these disturbances present in early childhood and whether they are related to autistic traits in early childhood.

[00:10:09]And the answer is no. Yes, they are.

[00:10:12]Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition.

[00:10:16]It is characterized by significant deficits in social interaction, reduced social awareness and communication, inability to decipher social social and much later sexual cues, restricted emotional engagement, reduced affect display, stereotyped behavior patterns, and concrete thinking and communication speech acts.

[00:10:40]True.

[00:10:41]>> [music]