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RE: 【转贴专帖】Cognitive Empathy at the Dinner Table
作者：Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
I’ve long felt that everyone has difficulty with cognitive empathy and perspective taking when it comes to minds that work differently from their own. A couple of weeks back, I had an interesting experience along these lines.
At the dinner table, I asked my husband Bob the following question:
Do you think I’m odd?
Now, if you’re on the spectrum, you probably realize that I asked the question because I wanted to know what he thought. If you’re not on the spectrum, you might wonder whether the question were a setup, along the lines of Do you think I look fat?
My husband, who is neurotypical, was absolutely stymied. Now, please understand that he is a very empathetic man in every sense, and that he is also very socially adept in conventional ways. He can read most people extremely well. He’s very sensitive. He’s the sort of person who can listen to you and make you feel like you’re the only person in the room. He can also can walk into a large social situation and chat it up with anyone. I’m often in awe of his social graces.
But when I asked him the question, he hesitated. He looked very uncomfortable. In fact, he had a look on his face that I recognized immediately. It’s the one that I’m sure I have on my face in most social situations. It was as though he were thinking about all the possible ways he could respond and couldn’t figure out which one was the right one.
I felt a pang of recognition.
It was very clear to me that he wasn’t able to figure out by my facial expression, my body language, my nonverbal cues, or the look in my eyes where I was coming from. So I decided to help him out in a way that I wish more people would help me out: I told why I’d asked the question.
“Honey,” I said. “I’m asking you a straightforward question to which I want a straightforward answer. I’m interested in how you see me.”
I could see he was still stuck. His neurotypical brain was saying, “I really have to finesse this somehow.” And the part of him that knows that I’m nothing if not direct was thinking, “Okay, I should just be a mensch and answer the question.”
So I helped him out again. “Really,” I said, “you must know me well enough by now to know that I don’t ask a question to which I don’t want the answer.”
He seemed relieved, and he said, “No, I don’t think you’re odd. But I do think you’re different.”
I found that helpful. The thing is, he couldn’t figure out why.
We talked more about it the next morning. He was still curious as to why I’d asked the question. Our ensuing conversation was a crystal clear example of the fact that like minds understand like minds, and that my experience of other people is very different from his experience of other people:
Bob: “Why do you want to know what I think of you?”
Me: “Because I’m interested.”
Bob: “But what does it matter? My opinion is purely subjective. It doesn’t say anything essential about you.”
Me: “Oh, okay. Let me clarify. I wasn’t asking you to tell me something essential about myself. I was asking what you thought.”
Bob: “I don’t understand that. You’re the only one who knows whether you’re odd or not!”
Me: “You’re right. Inside myself, I feel perfectly normal. After all, I’ve always been me. But I’m not always able to read how other people see me, because I don’t think like they do, and your opinion helps me imagine how another person might view me. In other words, I’m information gathering.”
Bob: “Okay. I see. That makes sense.”
Me: “I’m glad you understand now.”
Please note the sheer number of words expended to explain my state of mind and where I was coming from. He could not tell until I verbalized it.
Sound familiar? I thought so.
The way I see it, everyone has difficulty empathizing with experiences and ways of thinking that seem foreign to their own.
It’s not an impairment. It’s just called being human. |
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楼主: 燕原
雷达卡
发表于 11-7-12 11:31:48
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