A recent study analyzed data about 14,000 college students collected over 30 years. The shocking findings: today’s college students are 40 percent lower in empathy than students from 20 or 30 years ago.
Read Empathy: College students don’t have as much as they used to, on Newswise.com.
Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader.
This is a great artifcle! I’d like to see where tghe other LF posters scored on the empathy test quiestionjs. I scorfed higher than 90% of the college students on empatny.
My bet is that LF peeps will sore in the top percentile., The only one I gave a total NO to was the one that asked if there were “two sides to every story” which I have learned is one of those3 MYTH WE WERE TAUGHT AS CHILDREN. It assumes we mean two VALID sides to every story which is NOT true!
Thanks donna, hope you guys will take the test and list your scores. I think it would be very interesting.
My reasoning for the decrease in empathy in college kids is that many if not most have had long stretches VERY early in day care situations, rather than being raised at home by a caregiver who was more consistently there. Just my takre on it, like to see some other opinions.
Thanks Donna.
This was interesting.
……I scored in the 80%.
The soft hearted question was the one I would have answered ‘pre spath experience’…differently.
So much of me has hardened…..although there is a little ‘mush’ still in there.
96.8% ……and I won’t ever change….EXCEPT….I have VERY STRONG boundaries now.
I had a BRICK wall…a few months ago….now I just have a very healhty “fence”.
It is interesting to me how I would have answered pre-enlightenment.
Oh,, I just got in touch with the writer that wrote the4 ONE news article about my P son’s victim that I have. I can’t find any more on interenet searches BUT the girl who was a staff writer then, I got into contadct with her (she has an unusual name and is still a journalst soI found her)
She gve me the number of the Texas state senator who was called oon an illegal cell phone from a death row inmate! So I contacted said senator by e mail just now. If I don’t hear back positively from him or one of his minions then will call his office—I hope that he will be able and willing to lean on the parole board about P son as well.
I’ve really decided I am not going to go for an Article in the news papers about “mother seeks NO parole for son” because that might WARN them. As it is, they cannot be sure that I DID indeed hire an attorney or go before the parole board and they might just think it was an “empty promise” or “empty threat” on my part cause they can’t by law know for sure, but a news article would get word to them I am sure.
Scored 82.9%, higher than 70% of the college graduates. Pre-sociopath, I would have probably scored close to 100%. LOL!
I agree with Oxy, I no longer think there are two sides to every story, I sometimes do have trouble feeling sorry for someone’s problems if they are a sociopath. I feel a little sorry, in the way I feel sorry about having to kill a scorpion. And when I’m sure I’m right (about a sociopath), I will NOT waste time listening to other arguments from the sociopath, etc.
I’ve changed….no doubt about it. But I think the test itself is flawed in that it buys into notions that only work in a sociopath free world….and it would be great to think that today’s college students are more sociopath aware and that is why they score lower. I DO think they are more cynical. How could they not be with Tiger Woods, all the politicians cheating and getting caught in lies, etc. So maybe that is what the test is picking up on.
I’m very sad to read these findings. I feel that maybe kindness, altruism is on the decline and it really seems to be more about getting one over on each other. Not for me, ever…i’d be happy to die out with the empaths than survive with the psychopaths.
I don’t know WHAT exactly to attribute the decline in empathy (in this group of people as gaged by this test) to in our society over the past 20-30 years, but I DO think it is more broad spread than JUST this group of our citizens. I think the decline of empathy is more general. MY own OPINION is the lack of bonding in children exposed to more “day care” and less “parenting” early on, as well as the influence of consistently VIOLENT media for the majority of the last 30+ years, and increasingly so.
I read an article recently in PsychologyToday on line about three different kinds of sex, the “hook up” sex that is just “animal sex” without any emotional connection, just like two kiids playing with each other’s bodies as the toys, and “married sex” which can be some connection but also could be used to bargain for various things, or to punish but is over all fairly connected. The third kiind of sex is “soul mate” connectedness of emotions.
I think the “hook up sex” has become very common in today’s society, and “soul mate sex” much more rare. As far as marriage is concerned, 50% of the first marriages end in divorce and the committment to marriage doesn’t seem to be all that strong in most segments of society. Second marriages are 75% doomed to failure. So where is committment to relationships? Why do people choose instead to serially cohabit with (many?) people fairly quickly rather than get to really know someone and marry and make a commitment for life?
I know so many people that have married 3-4-5 times and/or cohabited with 5-10 various people. Somehow this just doesn’t seem like it should be anywhere close to “good” much less ideal. Where does that leave children who are raised in such “relationships”?
I’m not throwing stones at anyone, I’ve not been a “model” for relationships myself and have been divorced (against my will) and have had sex outside of committed relationships, yet we still some how WANT that “soul mate” but I know very few people who ever really found it. I do know some pretty good and long lasting marriages though.
The over all feeling I get from the results of this study is sadness at our society.
The questions seem kind of easy to game, depending on whether a person is more concerned about seeing cold or seeming like an easy sucker. As in, a hard-core P could take this and probably score 100% by lying if they so chose. I remember in my first week of college, all the freshmen gave money to panhandlers. By the third month, no one was giving money to the same drugged up panhandlers who kept bugging us every day. Was their empathy decreased, or did they just realize they were being used? Still, I’d be concerned about the ones that indicated tendencies to do things like not attempt to see others’ perspectives.
I think there’s a balance between narcissism and codependency. A society that is unwilling to tolerate sociopaths’ BS pity ploys is, imho, a good thing. A society that tolerates or worse independently initiates sociopathic evil is a bad thing.
Scored 97.1%. I agree with neveragain’s idea of collage age kids being more cynical. Some of it is healthy and some is jaded.
My college age daughter has been committment phobic, she backs out of relationships when they get too serious. I think this has something to do with trust but she does have empathy. She is more level headed and can see the forest for the trees so would put up with less than me.
Empathy can be taught but some of it is genetic. My son was born with tons of empathy while my middle daughter learned it and grew into it. Parents have a big impact on teaching empathy to children. Daughter was a little like her dad and I was afraid that she would be as manipulative as he was. She bossed her brother around a bunch. She would kick the dog off of her bed at night (around 1st grade), now she is mortified that she did that to Corky.
The question I asked was “How would you like it if______did that to you?”
My older daughter was teased on the bus in middle school. It was pretty hard on her, but I got upset with her when she saw someone else being teased in high school and she did nothing about it. Step up. If you put yourself in their shoes, you should know to step up and just say “cut it out”.
After the disillusionment of learning what the husband really is and what some people are capable of, the empathy factor should technically go down. Just hope to use the information to make better judgements on any future relationships.
I got a little perspective on the subject a few years back by reading Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before and also The Marketing of Evil. Both very good reads that target the moral decline of society.
(Here is an article that touches on what the Generation Me book says.) http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118358476840657463.html
When I initially talked to my daughters of the exBF S, and said that it is believed that they are 4% of the population, my college age daughter thought about it and said she knows a couple of people that could probably qualify.