Autistic people are often labelled as “mind-blind” of incapable of empathy, however this assumption centres the perspectives of neurotypical people. In this blog post Psychology student Jadwiga Michlewicz explains that this is a one-sided view of autism. She discovered that according to the double empathy problem, communication problems between different neurotypes result from mutual misunderstanding and are a shared responsibility for those with and without autism.
The chances are good that you have heard of mirror neurons. They were once thought to be the harbingers of a scientific revolution, and promised to “do for psychology what DNA did for biology” (according to the prominent neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran in an Edge essay in 2000). But the revolution didn’t happen. In fact, […]
The author discusses the results of her recent study on self-reported empathy in women with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and queries how representative currently diagnosed women with ASD are of the total population of women on the spectrum (including those ‘under the radar’ who have not received a diagnosis of ASD).
Homeopathy is a domain of alternative medicine that has no scientific plausibility. However, many people are convinced of its effectiveness because they are fooled by the unconscious psychological mechanisms homeopaths utilize for treatment. One of these mechanisms is the patients’ positive reaction to the empathy homeopaths show during consultations.