The Do People with Asperger's Syndrome Have Empathy? webpage suggests that it is possible to have empathy without "seeing" the body language of others. This describes a news story which evoked a great deal of empathy without "body language" communication.
This was written because I thought it may not be apparent how people can
have empathy for others if they are unable to read body language.
A Specific Example - Shalhevet Pass
The Shalhevet Pass story is just one of a large number of sad stories
that we read about in the news. It is noteworthy only because it evoked
personal feelings in a large number of people who read about it.
Shalhevet Pass was 10 months old when a sniper aimed at her through a telescopic scope shot and killed her (26 Mar 01). This was presumably done on purpose, as evidenced by the fact that her killer also shot at a four-year-old, only grazing her. Presumably the killer wanted to kill the young children of settlers in Hebron. Whatever the politics, the killer was obviously trying to kill children when he killed Shalhevet.
Very few people knew Shalhevet, but a lot of people who knew about the story felt badly when hearing about it. So much so that when the killer was arrested 17 months later, it was enough to report the person arrested as "the killer of Shalhevet Pass". This despite the occurrence of many more killings, including the 11th September attacks and numerous suicide bombings. People remembered the incident enough to recognize the name of the baby. (There is some confusion here over the arrest itself. Mahmud Mohammad Mahmud Amru was actually arrested on 10-Dec-02, so it appears that in the earlier story he was not yet apprehended and only his house was demolished.)
Obviously the people who remembered didn't experience a direct personal connection with the baby. Yet that didn't keep them from having empathy with the baby and the parents.
To the same extent, people on the Spectrum who knew the story would have been empathetic. Perhaps more so, because people on the Spectrum don't rely on body language for empathy. Autistics have much less input from the type of body language that NTs are used to in everyday life.
Here the story is intermingled with politics, but only to some extent. There were people following the story who (at the time) were in favour of withdrawing settlements from the Jewish Quarter of Hebron and places near Palestinian areas, but yet they also had a reaction to the killing of Shalhevet.
The point is that if empathy is measured in ability to have feelings for
something that suggests emotional feelings, people on the Spectrum are
going to have the same sort of feelings as NTs.
Just One Example
As mentioned in the main webpage, there have been various
"gripping" stories ivolving the plight of individuals. People
have empathy with individuals in the news. The ability of anyone (NTs
or autistics) to have empathy for total strangers has little to do with
reading of body language.
back to empathy.html Do People with Asperger's Syndrome Have Empathy?
This is linked to pages on relationships and autistics, and relates to the ability of autistics to establish intimate relationships.
The myth of lack of empathy has been used as some sort of justification for abuse of people on the Spectrum