Are there any college students who are empathetic?
ANN ARBOR—Today’s college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and ’90s, a University of Michigan study shows. The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.
When did empathy drop off in college students?
“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”
Why do some people have less empathy than others?
“The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline,” he said.
How is empathy a measure of how much you care?
Empathy is not a measure of how much you care, but your ability to read emotional content from *external cues.* It is, in short, a measure of perception, not compassion. This is particularly bothersome for those in the Asperger’s community, since “lack of empathy” (in it’s real sense — that of being unable to read non-verbal cues) is a trait.
ANN ARBOR—Today’s college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and ’90s, a University of Michigan study shows. The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.
“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”
“The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline,” he said.
Empathy is not a measure of how much you care, but your ability to read emotional content from *external cues.* It is, in short, a measure of perception, not compassion. This is particularly bothersome for those in the Asperger’s community, since “lack of empathy” (in it’s real sense — that of being unable to read non-verbal cues) is a trait.