Students Show a Dramatic Drop In Empathy 659
Posted
by
kdawson
from the well-boo-hoo dept.
from the well-boo-hoo dept.
MotorMachineMercenar writes "Several news sources report that today's college students show a precipitous drop in empathy (here's MSNBC's take). The study of 14,000 students shows that students since the year 2000 had 40% less empathy than those 20 and 30 years before them. The article lays out a laundry list of culprits, from child-rearing practices and the self-help movement, to video games and social media, to a free-market economy and income inequality. There's also a link so you can test your very own level of narcissism. Let's hope the Slashdot crowd doesn't break the empathy counter on the downside."
They are the day care generation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh god.. (Score:5, Informative)
You're getting closer to the truth. See Robert Putnam. [boston.com]
Re:Broken test (Score:3, Informative)
That's taken into account in the rating, though. You can't really judge a score (if you can at all) without context of the rest of the population anyway. So floating the bottom score above zero points doesn't change much any more than having an effective minimum score on the SAT does.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:5, Informative)
That's wrong. We only laugh when we know that the person/animated character is not seriously hurt. Every animated character that comes to harm, may at first appear harmed, but always reappears later in perfect health. Even in the more extremely violent animated comedy - Itchy and Scratchy. The same is true of real life. If someone falls, our first reaction is the need to know whether they are OK or not. If they are uninjured, then we may find it funny. If they are injured, then we do not find it funny.
(Of course there are sociopaths to whom this general rule may not apply. Also when we are completely removed from witnessing or emotional involvement in the incident or the victim, e.g. The Darwin Awards.)
In fact the laugh probably originates as an "all clear" signal amongst ape ancestors. When danger has disappeared, or it was a false alarm, we laugh. Thus the association between laughing and pleasure.
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:1, Informative)
Then you should check again. The US was colonized by a bunch of pricks so uptight that the British were annoyed by them. And it wasn't unfair taxation. Do some real research. A damn comedy site knows more than you. http://www.cracked.com/article_18442_5-reasons-founding-fathers-were-kind-dicks.html [cracked.com]
Article contains legit links to research proving its points.
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:5, Informative)
At least the liberals are pretending to try and protect the consumer, where the anti-progressives just want the corporations to roam free and pillage and plunder like they have for years.
Garbage survey. (Score:4, Informative)
When one of the questions is "Are you empathetic?" and the answer "yes" results in your being scored as empathetic, the test is, as others have noted, unlikely to provide any insight. The only way this little test works is as a sort of meta-test: if you can't pick a result and get it on the first try, you're not very good at imagining what the person who designed it was thinking.
Just by answering each question by giving the strongest response in what I judged to be the appropriate direction, I was able to score 70/70 on the empathy scale on the very first try. For my second trick, I successfully scored the minimum possible, an angry red 1/5 on each question. I didn't even bother to systematically check my previous friendly green 5/5 answers and reverse them.
For what it's worth, I then made a half-way honest attempt, without any real soul-searching, to pick responses that I felt described me fairly, picking the middle of the scale on the most egregiously ambiguous statements, and I scored bang in the middle: 51/70. I think it's safe to say that the results mean nothing, alas, so I still can't settle the question of whether I'm an android or not.
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:4, Informative)
You are either a liar, or mislead by the other liars.
The vast majority of Europe would be considered communist in your eyes, yet they're currently doing much better than we are, both socially and economically. You conveniently ignore Europe, though, and act as if anything but worshiping CEOs and then bailing them out when they can't milk the system any more means we'll end up starving in a country run by a man who wears over-sized women's sunglasses. To suggest that one can not "get ahead" in a place like France or Germany is just showing your ignorance of the world, and blind love for your homeland. This is called xenophobia, and was the founding principal of far worse groups than the communists.
Look at what capitalism has gotten us. Banking deregulation destroyed our economy, and drill baby drill got us a giant spewing hole in the middle of the ocean right next to us. Capitalism is killing us. People like you, who go around yelling "give corporations more power!" while moaning about Stalin are simply detached from reality. You, sir, live in your own world. Kindly stay there, and leave the real world to the grown ups.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:3, Informative)
You call it 'enlightened self-interest' , i call it 'altruism' . It's basically the same thing.
It's obvious altruism evolved as a process of evolution ( necessary for the survival of the group , which in turn makes it possible for individuals to survive ) , so it makes sense that some animals are also altruistic .
Re:Oh god.. (Score:2, Informative)
When applying the concept to human behavior, I was using a concise word to refer to a specific set of behaviors, not the underlying motivations. Is there another word that would better encapsulate that meaning?