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Students Show a Dramatic Drop In Empathy
MotorMachineMercenar writes "Several news sources report that today's college students show a precipitous drop in empathy (here's MSNBC's take). The study of 14,000 students shows that students since the year 2000 had 40% less empathy than those 20 and 30 years before them. The article lays out a laundry list of culprits, from child-rearing practices and the self-help movement, to video games and social media, to a free-market economy and income inequality. There's also a link so you can test your very own level of narcissism. Let's hope the Slashdot crowd doesn't break the empathy counter on the downside."
.. the linked test reminds me of those "what job are you best suited for" tests we got in school. The ones which after answering at least 100 very transparent and subjective questions would recommend you become a garbage man, an astronaut, or maybe a carpenter.
And all the questions are the same.. they could have essentially made the whole thing two questions:
1) are you empathetic
2) are you _NOT_ empathetic
Personally I think people are just as self centered now as always and we've just gotten better (supposedly) at measuring it.
It's like how mental illness would appear to be on the rise. It could be legitimate change, or it could be that we've come up with fancy names for kids who back in the day would've just been called "a little slow" and/or ended up in a job where no one would notice.
I don't give a rat's ass about what college kids feel!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Subject one contains 160 milliempathetals, while subject two's milliempathetals measure only 96.
You know, after hearing this, I felt the need to write extensively about the subject on facebook, so everyone can see what I feel.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
you (the west) hold up crack dealers and gangsters as heroes (50cent et al), corporate psychopaths are held up as examples of "successful business leaders" and have TV shows (the apprentice) where people are expected to emulate these leaders in "ruthless business decisions", where kids see a class of people rip off their savings and retirements (bankers) and have 0 consequences, where a celebrity class are held up as models of behaviour where you dont work but shop on your working husbands/wifes credit cards or your rich dads inheritance
and you are surprised there is less empathy ?
i'm surprised there are no fucking lynch mobs
So am I the only one noticing the growing trend to vilify capitalism and individualism in this country? Last I checked self-determination and free market capitalism were some of the founding principles of this country, yet I'm increasingly seeing these traits being blamed for all of society's problems. I find this highly disturbing, along with the disappearance of a major political party interested in smaller, less pervasive government.
.technomancer
I'd argue that one of the "poisons" of modern society is all the garbage where "nobody loses". We have contests in school these days where everyone wins a prize.... Instead of coming in "last" and "losing", you get a 4th. or 5th. place ribbon. Instead of letting people score poorly on tests, you've got people trying to change the scores around. And instead of "hurting someone's feelings" - there's this whole thing of labeling them as having some sort of "disorder", implying they can't help their actions and they need special consideration/treatment.
If this generation is lacking some of THAT empathy, that's a step in the right direction!
These sorts of tests/surveys are pretty useless. Unlike something like the MMPI, which is difficult at best to game, the linked survey is very transparent; you can answer it specifically to get the results you want. That being said it seems that especially since the world economy took it's drastic downturn the world in general has become (for lack of a better term) a more evil place, overall; when times are good and there is plenty for all, it's easy to "pretend" to be not-evil. When the going gets rough, you find out what people are really like beneath the surface.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
There is a great deal of irony in your post in that you are opining about lack of empathy in young people, yet you show a lack empathy for a great portion of (US) society for which it IS completely normal to own a firearm.
OK, while I can imagine a lot of reasons why the current generation of college kids might be less empathetic than 20 years ago*, this is not a good way to measure that. For all the researchers know, students are just more self-aware and self-critical today than they were 20 years ago. In some ways, getting a high score might be more likely to say that you're less empathetic and just oblivious to your callousness.
* This isn't my experience, though. I feel, as a college professor, like my students behave just as empathetically towards each other as we did 15 years ago.
Nice job sliding the anti-firearm propaganda in there, but don't forget that firearm ownership happens to be very common in "wholesome" parts of the country where crime is rare and weapons are treated with respect. The military participation thing is not only historically "normal", but considered to be self-sacrifice (the marketing of particular wars IS a separate issue!).
Kids today are understanding that it makes sense to cover your own ass. Being an empathetic emo doesn't do that, and never did. Some of us are ancient enough to remember times before universal emophilia (hey, I coined a word!) and aren't nostalgic FOR emophilia. In tough times, get tough.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
people who would burglarize are the kind of no-empathy-having oxygen-thieves whose self-centered motivations cause all the misery in the world. examples of people like you that think we shouldn't pump some rounds of lead into their useless noggins are reason why youngsters these days have no empathy.
I come off as not empathetic... however, I try very hard to see everything from everyone's point of view, I try to see all sides and be in someone else shoes before making any judgement. However, people do a lot of stupid stuff and I believe that they deserve the consequences for doing said stupid things. I may see *why* they did that stupid thing and try understand their motivation, but not sorry for them when they face the consequences. I expect people to view me the same way when I do stupid things. Life also is not fair, people bitching that things go wrong all the time for them (even if it clearly not their fault or when things aren't really that bad) are speaking to the choir... we all go thru that shit, suck it up and try to see the good days (or at least the "not bad" days). The bad days are frustrating, we get it... we don't want to hear it all the time :)
Isn't this one we can pretty much all agree is /b/'s fault?
It is sad to see such an important topic treated like this. The test is practically worthless. It has absolutely no control questions and the structure makes no distinction between what people think of themselves and how they act in real life.
./ers but we are still IT geeks. We can easily spot a mediocre or poorly constructed "test" and there is really no reason to waste our time with something on this level of quality (or lack thereof).
I suspect the majority of people scoring over 50 points are in fact egocentric narcissists who think they are very empathic.
Please. We might be
Yes. Really.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
I found a decent summary article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-23-gen-next-cover_x.htm which had some intersting counter points
Maybe I'm overstating the point but I just don't see how volunteering as a local fireman whilst studying Physics, or working with disabled kids whilst studying History, or spending hours in retirement communities while trying to do something fancy with election data from the last 20 years, can be defined as anything but empathetic. That's the kind of thing my peers were fulling their time with.
Finally, regarding the debt question - in my experience I've found that those with the biggest debts are the ones with most empathy. Those with debts of over 200k are damn near living saints. Same goes for those on financial aid really. It's a damn small sample I know but it sure as hell felt like the ones doing the most good on my campus were also the ones recieving the most aid. There's always space for a cynical interpretation but it's of unknown value in this situation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What?
The lies about WMD
What in the world does alleged lying have to do with empathy? Poor performance of the intelligence community hardly seems relevant, but at least you're making your bias clear from the get go I suppose.
the lies about drugs
Which lies? That they often unhealthy (both legal and illegal ones), that they're unnecessary and even counter-productive to live a happy and productive life? Or some other lies?
people telling you that is perfectly normal to own a gun
What is abnormal about owning a gun? Of course, if you're hopped up on drugs you probably shouldn't own a weapon.
that it is normal to shoot at someone just for trespassing/burglary
I see, maybe we should punish them with love instead? Breaking into someone's home is akin to invading another country. All bets are off when it comes to protecting family and property. If you come into my home with violent intent, just how much violence is too much? Baseball bat? Knife? Gun? Should I just ask you to leave nicely and hand over my wallet if you won't?
That is cool to join the army and fuck up another sorry son of a bitch that you had absolutely no conflict with
That's kind of the definition of war. How many Nazis did WWII soldiers have personal conflicts with?
The people who are selfish are the people that drive the ferrari's around at wallstreet
Being wealthy and choosing how you want to spend your wealth is selfish?
They are being held up as icons by a complete generation
People on Wall Street are about as far from an "icon" for young people as is possible.
No I am not surprised. Just very worried.
No reason to be, I doubt humans are less empathetic in general now than ever before, only that people are more honest about it now. I imagine this might be from a certain amount of the GIFT extending from online communities into real-world interactions. We've gone from interacting only with a small local community to dealing with thousands/millions of people online plus our local community. It's harder to feel empathy with so many anonymous people communicating only with text so it isn't too surprising that some apathetic feelings creep in.
When you're actually dealing with somebody sitting in front of you, face-to-face, I think most people would exhibit a higher level of empathy.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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When you haven't ruthlessly focused your education on acquiring a variety of JOB skills that, along with hobbies that help make you employable, expect not to be employed. Your elders made the mistake of telling you is "do your own thing" without warning you that choices have consequences. Your school, like many, may have been more focused on SELLING a degree than fitting clients for work.
What did you study?
I took my lessons from MY elders, the Depression babies who had to scrabble. Life is a shit sandwich, and the more bread you have the less shit you taste. Education is for making MONEY, because without MONEY, you have fewer choices. Hobbies and recreational education are for fun, but don't typically pay the rent. If you can't get a job that fits your education, do any damn thing you have to. Consider skilled trades (I've never met a mechanic who couldn't make a living) instead of pushing paper. (Come to think of it, that's one area where some of your elders screwed you by discouraging manual labor. Mechanics and weldors, for example, can make serious money and are highly mobile.)
Unique and special snowflakes may disregard the above advice, but they are either employed or don't need to be.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Small sidebar.
Santax: "(The lies about WMD, the lies about drugs), (people telling you that is perfectly normal to own a gun, that it is normal to shoot at someone just for trespassing/burglary)"
The two categroies of events have nothing to do with one another. I'm not sure what environment you live in. Perhaps you're in an urban area where, if something is going wrong, you are pefectly able to dial 911 with 99% certainty and a police officer is just two minutes away. But not all of us live in those areas.
Here's the thought process behind many of those law-abiding citizens who legally carry firearms.
Any time you have to use any implement in a life-threatening emergency, whether it be a fire extinguisher to put out a fire or an implement to make a human threat to your life stop being a threat, it is a life-changing event for you and should be avoided at all costs.
But here’s the reality. Out where we live, at any one time there may be between 1 and 4 Sheriff deputies covering the entire 527 square miles of the county. In the neighboring county, if you call 911 at 3AM on a Tuesday morning, you will get the CELL PHONE of the on-call Deputy. Maybe he’s awake, maybe not.
There have been a high number of burglaries in this area – two involving a homeowner being shot, one of those a deadly shooting.
If you hear a knock at your door and see a guy with a 12-gauge and ski mask on your porch, the cops may be 20 minutes away. You need a way to make this person stop being a threat immediately. If he sees that you have a certain implement of minor destruction (IMD) and runs away, great! Your goal of making the person stop being a threat has succeeded. It is a gravely unfortunate circumstance, however, that in some cases merely displaying IMD’s does not work – the person is too intent on getting your possessions and won’t hesitate to use whatever force is needed. In these cases the only way to stop the threat is to use equal force and hope for the best... knowing full well that there are heavy legal and psychological burdens to deal with after the fact. You’ll (hopefully) still be alive afterward, but as I said, these situations should be avoided at all costs.
It's a very heavy decision to make, possibly having to take the life of another to preserve my own life... but at least with a weapon I am able to make that decision.
Santax, around here there aren't many residents who *do not* own a gun; thus the "normal" mode of living is to own a gun. And if someone is intent on breaking in to your house, you do not have the luxury of a full psychological profile to determine if that person is going to kill you or not - you have to neutralize the threat or accept a very high risk of being killed. Whether "neutralize" means the guy is scared away when you pull your gun, or "neutralize" means you have to shoot until the threat stops, that's up to the burglar.
This has nothing to do with empathy, nor the lies that were told about WMD or are told about drugs. I'll put it this way... I don't eat meat because I'm empathetic towards the plight of factory-farmed animals. However, since I don't burglarize, my empathy towards those who may be intent upon breaking into my house and killing me is non-existent. I have two friends who feel the same way.
But then they could not measure your annoyance over trivial crap.
I've often heard the lack of forced military or civil service (a draft or something similar) as having been a detriment on society and empathy. After going through a war trying to save other people, or having to defend the guy next to you even if you think he's a jerk. How many people do you think would go around pointing guns at people and playing thug if they had spent some time shooting and defending people, understanding just how powerful a tool the thing is.
But you can easily grow up in a suburban house, without any real violence. And you can go through school without really interacting with poorer people or having to be humanitarian. You know what your comfy life is, and your friends comfy life. And you can go straight to college, and learn about how America has dominated many people and the military can be evil. Your parents can give you a car at 16, and keep you from having to face a touch teacher by yelling at them and making sure you're treated "fairly".
It's really easy for people to be isolated from sorrier conditions and situations where they would have go out of themselves and show empathy.
Instead, you can sit in your room with your own personal 32" TV and My Super Sexy Sweet 16 on MTV, and become a better person.
Personally, I have a hard time showing many of those people empathy. When a girl I went to high school with recked her 3rd car and her parents wouldn't buy her a new one, why would I empathize with that. She didn't deserve the first. She certainly didn't deserve the 2nd. Why should she get a 4th?
And when I'm being told I should empathize with someone who lost their license for drunk driving the 4th time and can't go to their job, or can't pay their bills because they can't afford that 8th kid they had because they wanted it with no thought to what that meant for the kid, I'm not terribly inclined to empathize with them.
I wonder. How much of this is people who can't empathize, and how much of this is people scoring lower because people aren't empathizing with people who probably don't deserver it?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Most likely there isn't time for a reaction to be in proportion.
If an intruder is in my home, my life is in jeopardy. The opportunity to ask the intruder whether or not he's armed, and then frisk him, just may not present itself.
I suppose if you could somehow guarantee (which you can't) that all home invaders are unarmed, then you could get away with playing your game of tag with them.
I'll guarantee that with my method, you'll have a lot fewer home invaders in the first place. And that's better for everyone.
It's not a dumb question
The question asks how do you feel. It does not ask about your actions.
To use your example. Two people can see someone is in distress, both look by casually and continue walking.
But the first did it due to lack of strong feelings to the situation or apathy. The second did it because they did feel the person's pain, but came to the conclusion that the best way to help would be to let that person deal with the issue themselves ( aka tough love ).
Although their actions are the same, they should answer the original question differently.
Anonymous: "And barring all that, you missed his point about the "shooting someone just for trespassing.""
Wow. Just... wow. This illustrates the OP's view about empathy perfectly... it is a logical fallacy to assume that all, or even most, or even any small percentage of folks who own guns automatically want to "shoot you if you step foot on my property again". You are absolutely correct - anyone who shoots someone merely for stepping foot on property SHOULD be arrested, and they often ARE.
Santax... "Shooting an unarmed burglar is precisely the same."
No, it's not. If someone gives you a little push, you assume they are being an idiot and walk away.
If someone is brazen enough to break in to your house while it is occupied, you must assume they have the intent to injure or kill you, and act accordingly to neutralize the threat. Hopefully, neutralization occurs when the burglar realizes you are armed and then flees - in this case, you would not shoot a fleeing burglar.
i would put bets that folks that could pull off WHY SO SERIOUS during a real disaster are say 1 in 200,000 worldwide (which means that The Joker has roughly 29 "friends")
Apparently none of them are mathematicians.
What about Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage movement or Gay rights right now? Women's place in marriage in the past was usually repressive & before Women's Suffrage they didn't even have many basic rights. Religion can create community & it can destroy it. Do something "wrong" in the eyes of the religious and the entire community will hold a grudge. Social clubs usually had a racist & sexist bent to them: no women, no blacks. Families still exist, it's just Betty Crocker was a lie. Your fear of homosexuals has nothing to do with families as many of them are trying to get the rights to marriage to maintain family lifestyle like heterosexuals.
It sounds like you long for "the good ol' days", where white straight males were dominant & "life was good". My Grandma grew-up during the Great Depression, my mom grew up through the late 50s & 60s. Both lives were hard. Life was not squeaky clean back then. It was only squeaky clean for the privileged: white males who made a decent wage - forget being poor, colored, a strong female or gay.
The current situation isn't perfect, but don't act like "the good ol' days" were either.
look at the response to my post, I am like the most caring person here, you fucking pieces of shit, get out of my fucking comments, go to hell, all of you.
You can't handle the truth.
I was convinced that it was going to be some kind of gross "get-off-my-lawn" Republican screed (Kids don't need self esteem! They need to play Cowboys v. Indians outside like the Greatest Generation! The idiot box is destroying their minds!) until I got to the second half where the author blames Ronald Reagan and conservatism for destroying empathy in the millennial generation (!!!). I think that she is not so much liberal as insane.
When one of the questions is "Are you empathetic?" and the answer "yes" results in your being scored as empathetic, the test is, as others have noted, unlikely to provide any insight. The only way this little test works is as a sort of meta-test: if you can't pick a result and get it on the first try, you're not very good at imagining what the person who designed it was thinking.
Just by answering each question by giving the strongest response in what I judged to be the appropriate direction, I was able to score 70/70 on the empathy scale on the very first try. For my second trick, I successfully scored the minimum possible, an angry red 1/5 on each question. I didn't even bother to systematically check my previous friendly green 5/5 answers and reverse them.
For what it's worth, I then made a half-way honest attempt, without any real soul-searching, to pick responses that I felt described me fairly, picking the middle of the scale on the most egregiously ambiguous statements, and I scored bang in the middle: 51/70. I think it's safe to say that the results mean nothing, alas, so I still can't settle the question of whether I'm an android or not.
Mind the Gap
i got a perfect score. seriously.
now go fuck off.
- js.
At least here in Norway, which I must admit has experienced an extreme rise in wealth over the last decades due to oil, I would say that by far most people trying to appeal to my empathy in daily life don't deserve it. I'm very fond of our many social securities for the disabled, elderly, unemployed, our socialized health care and pay a pretty penny in taxes without grumbling too much - but the flip side of that is that I know that people are also quite well taken care of. What I get in my daily life is usually obnoxious rom (that's gypsies with a PR touch) beggars who are really organized bands placing them out, protecting their territory and faking their desperation. The same bands who are grossly overrepresented in our criminal statistics by the way, supporting them is supporting organized crime.
To continue on that, I have very little empathy with criminals and very much empathy with victims, when we create what is probably the world's most luxurious prison I feel like puking. Not because I'm in favor of stuffing them in a dark hole with a mud floor, but because I want that money put into police protection and getting more criminals off the streets. Quantity, not quality absolutely does matter in this respect. The punishments in this country is an insult to everyone who has been beaten, mugged, raped or murdered. The money spent is an insult to all those elderly who spent their best years rebuilding after WWII and need help on their elder days and instead we spend it on the people bent on tearing society down instead of building it up.
I'm very much in favor of programs that provide opportunity, like for example here in Norway there is a lot of public higher education and a government sponsored grant/loan institution which means that practically everyone that wants to can take an education. I come from a family that would no doubt have sponsored a college education and a college fund, so quite likely I'm losing money by this being a public system. But at the same time I feel very empathic to children that grow up in less fortunate families or perhaps more egoistic families who don't have that backing. I know it's not fully that black and white in the US either, but your background definitely has much more impact there than here.
What I notice is that in the US there's much stronger opposition to any form of government "empathy" so to speak, Obama would be a right-wing extremist in most European coutries. Everybody should fend for themselves, and if they can't they should beg for private charity. My impression is that both for people and corporations it's whatever position is most opportunistic at the moment though. Here on the other hand the government should provide most of the first and second level of Maslow's pyramid, physiological and safety needs. Maybe it's just because we're richer, but I don't think so because I see the difference in our neighboring countries too which aren't that rich - not richer than the US anyway. I'm not sure whether it's because we're more empathic and just accept this as natural, or more collectivist and figure that deciding it by popular vote is justification enough. Either way, it also lowers the need for personal empathy, I don't give two bucks to a beggar because I give that and much more each day through taxes.
The other big difference is in health care, the US seems very happy to meter our medical punishment for bad lifestyle. While we tax the hell out of alcohol, tobacco and all other sorts of unhealthy things here, we don't ever withhold medical help. Despite being very big on individuality and freedom of life, if you want a band aid either from charity or the government then most seem to think your life should be splayed wide open for inspection to determine if you're worthy. Here there's a different interaction between the health system and patient, trust me the doctors will give you straight talk about what you are doing to your body but we won't play t
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