Reexamining Empathy in Autism: The Role of Empathic Disequilibrium in Autism and Autistic Traits

Abstract

Background: While many autistics report feelings of excessive empathy, their experience is not reflected by most of the current literature, which typically, but not always, suggests that autism is characterized by intact emotional empathy and reduced cognitive empathy. To try and bridge this gap in empirical findings and with respect to individuals' experiences, we examined a novel conceptualization of empathy termed empathic disequilibrium, i.e., the imbalance between emotional and cognitive empathy. Empathic disequilibrium was previously found to predict autistic traits in non-autistic population, suggesting it is an important empathy measure. Here, we aimed to extend the generalizability of empathic disequilibrium to the autistic population and to provide a better analytical approach to examine this construct.Methods: We analyzed self-reports of empathy and autistic traits in a large cohort (N = 4,914) of autistic and non-autistic individuals. We applied a polynomial regression with response surface analysis to examine empathic disequilibrium and total empathy as predictors of an autism diagnosis and autistic traits. Results: Total empathy and empathic disequilibrium each predicted autism. There was a higher probability for diagnosis in individuals with lower total empathy, but also in individuals with higher emotional relative to cognitive empathy. Linear and non-linear patterns linked empathy, empathic disequilibrium, and autistic traits and diagnosis, with empathic disequilibrium being more prominent in females. Conclusions: Empathic disequilibrium might allow for a more nuanced and sensitive understanding of empathy and its link with autism. This study provides empirical evidence that empathic disequilibrium is at least as informative as empathy for assessing autism, and offers a novel analytical approach for examining the role of empathy at the phenomenological level.