Depends on the situation.

A bit lacking in the empathy department and believe it to be getting worse with a growing sense of apathy at best towards those around me.

Anger, Hate, Contempt I feel surpasses my empathy for others with a general sense of rage. Overall it is hard for me to feel empathy for any given person but very easy to get on my bad side.

For some reason this. Mostly though it's when I see a character is going to be rejected or be made fun off I feel bad for them. Other than that no not really. But sure if I see someone I know is sad I feel a bit sad as well :shrug:

I guess I have an average amount of empathy.

I have empathy for family members only, for other people a big fat 0 .

I have empathy if you try to fix your problems.

As soon as you stop trying, you can just forget about getting a second glance from me. Fight the good fight or don't fight at all.

I used to have empathy. I really connected with people and understood how they felt no matter their mood. But I seem to have drifted away from that, and become pretty cold.

Lol, Zelgadis doesn't give two rats asses about anyone except for himself most of the time, so no, my avatar doesn't have much of anything to do with my post ^^

My empathy level is every bit as strong to people in real life as it is in other areas(video games, books, music, tv/movies).

I can turn it off, to a small degree, if I concentrate hard enough, but then I can't pay enough attention to the movie/game/whatever to understand whats going on. Just takes to much focus to shut it out.

I can't even watch America's Funniest Home videos anymore, since most of the videos they think are funny are generally of people doing things that end up with them getting hurt(often in ways that must be pre-planned, because if that stuff were to happen on the fly, half those contestants wouldn't be alive to send the video in!), and I'm just physically unable to keep my eyes on the screen because of how strongly I can feel what they must have felt. Even worse when a guy gets a crotch-shot, since that's a natural sympathizer for most men, it's even worse for me.

I used to feel/be very empathetic when I was young, but life has pretty much beaten it out of me. I'll occasionally sniffle from a sad movie scene (rare tho) and that's about it.

Which isn't to say I don't feel sympathy or even horror...but if it doesn't directly affect me & mine, I don't spend tons of time thinking about it. Life is too short to spend that much time agonizing over things you have no control over.

I tend to have empathy for those I feel deserve it (very few), otherwise I just think most people are either too lazy, full of excuses and BS, or too hopeless to bother caring about in these regards.

I have some high levels of empathy like you OP. I felt a great fear and saddness when I heard about the Japan tsunami/ earthquake, even though I don't know anyone there.

I also have high levels of empathy. I call it clairsentience, and it's not always a good thing for me. It runs in the family, because my mom has it, and my daughter appears to, as well. I feel great sympathy for people in pain, suffering, struggling with life... Sometimes I get depressed and cry just from watching the news or reading a sad story. I don't watch the news very often because of it... But even though it can cause depression in me, I still consider it much more of a gift than a curse, and I would never wish it away. Being able to feel for others, even when you've never directly experienced what they are going through, is something I feel blessed with. So yeah, I can understand what the OP said. You can never turn it off, but you can learn how to have more control over it.

I will literally feel pain in the same exact location as others in pain. I probably would've went into the medical field if not for that.

Before I couldn't, I never cried. NEVER. Now, well, my heart's been broken and I react to things 4234235 times more emotionally.

Some things that can get to me are the people who never asked for trouble but it came to them anyway. Movies get to me a lot, probably more than real life stories do for whatever reason. But for the most part, I'm kind of stoic in terms of emotion and sometimes it's good because I've been seen as a leader in tough times but sometimes come across as insensitive. I grew up in a bad bad city and I just got used to the bad things around me. I suppose I like being that stoic guy, cause' my friends know I'll be the one that won't back down from sadness or emotion.

If the person is trying to do something about the situation they have my infinite empathy and support.

If they are just [censored]ing they have none.

You might be interested in this article about "empathising" and "systemising" brains.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/six/articles/empathising_systemising.shtml

"Systemising" behaviour is traditionally associated with men and "empathising" with women, but it's more like a spectrum with more men being towards the systemising end and more women towards the empathising end.

On the continuum where 0 is the centre and 100 on either side is 100% "female" or 100% "male", I was about 25% female. The average woman is 50% "female" and the average man is 50% "male".

A typical example of how that works out in terms of empathising is that often when a woman is upset in front of a man, he'll just start off rattling suggestions to fix the problem rather than offering a hug or sympathy. Some people find that infuriating. I have that same habit, and if it's my husband who's upset I'll just sit quietly until he's finished ranting before I try to offer a suggestion on how to solve the problem. I'll offer a hug because I know that's what people want a lot of the time, but really I'll just be waiting for them to calm down before we can start logically thinking about how to fix whatever's causing the problem. That's a systemising rather than empathising response.

In my psychometric tests I had 68% agressivness and 32 % empathy, but that′s just bull! :wink_smile:

Technically you can't know both the position and velocity of any given particle at a certain time...


















:nerd:

We ban people for torturing cats here. :stare:

If I'm watching a television show (generally a comedy), and a character is about to do something stupid, I generally get a feeling like "Man, that really svcks for them." in the back of my head. I've gotten really pissed over certain events in certain games, novels, etc, to a degree where I literally shout at my system in disgust.

Other than that, I don't have much concern for anyone other than my close friends and myself. I'm not the type of person to tolerate those who are "fakes;" i.e. they act nice five percent of the time, and then ignore you the rest of it.

Besides Pena Ajena (AKA "Spanish Shame"; feeling embarrassed for others), I tend not to be very empathetic. It just goes with my overall lack of emotions.

It depends. There are some things that I feel very empathetic towards, like a friend getting an MMO account hacked (Tear-jerking, I know.). But then there are things that I couldn't care less about, such as relationship troubles and "normal people problems".

I've noticed that I'm more empathatic for things in video games(like the portal turrets) than people. But I still try to be a nice guy.

I believe kindness should be absolute. While sometimes I do not feel empathy, I feel guilty when I don't. I always try to express sympathy. So that is to say I have a logical process ingrained where I believe in kindness to others, so I will show kindness and sympathy even if I don't always feel strong empathy. I don't believe in cruelty, and one of my definitions of evil is taking pleasure in the genuine pain of others... no matter how horrible a person they are. For example, I would not say I'm glad someone like Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein is dead, because that would be evil. I will say I am glad that because they died, they could not personally inflict any suffering on others anymore. This doesn't mean I oppose deadly force, but it does mean I think there is never justified revenge, and feeling glad someone suffered or died is a facet of evil that should be shunned. Torture is an evil, and anyone that supports it for any reason is an advocate of some facet of evil as far as I'm concerned.

Sometimes I'll feel happiness when someone I see as evil dies, but I will immediately put my logical thought processes into play and internally scold myself for such evil thoughts.

I guess you could say it's my own way of applying truths about goodness and badness and then applying them through a logical filter in how I act. I see feelings as something that can be very positive, and empathy certainly is. I do my best to think with a clear mind, however, and I don't feel anger or hatred ever does any good so while those emotions pop into mind sometimes I try to expunge them as soon as I can, and recognize them as negative thoughts to be discarded as much as possible.

Some people call this kind of thought cold. I think it's just the opposite: putting what's right above any feelings of anger etc.

One silly thing about this though is that I feel so strongly about this way of thought I apply it to video games too. I wouldn't do the Dark Brotherhood quests for example. It's just too much for me, though I absolutely accept that there's nothing wrong with others enjoying a video game that goes in that direction.