Jul 29 • General discussion
Confident people have LESS empathy?
Generally, the scientific consensus is that confident people score high in empathy; or more accurately, they do not correlate with low empathy.
While people in positions of power, or narcissists, have low empathy and yet may also experience feelings of confidence, their idea of “confidence” is - in my opinion - a fragile pseudo-confidence that’s easily shattered by external factors. It's more like arrogance, certainty, and competence.
However, I do have a hypothesis that building true self-confidence reduces a certain element of empathy, namely: the emotional sympathy and “caring” reaction. In other words, you care less in that you don't feel others' pain as much.
Confident people don’t “care” as much emotionally as low-confidence people do. They’re not as attached to external things and people, yet they are still able to demonstrate cognitive empathy, i.e. they can rationalise other peoples’ behaviour through mentally putting themselves in the other person’s shoes. They don’t get upset about other people being upset, yet are able to comprehend why they’re upset and how they must feel.
I noticed this with my own development, particularly during my time as a Probation Officer. In that job, there simply isn’t the mental room and resources available to become upset over every upsetting thing, because there’s too many of them! When you deal with drug addicts and rapists and gang members every day, “upsetting” becomes mundane. You develop a numbness to the horror and sadness.
I imagine it’s similar for military and medical staff. You can’t feel much because you simply wouldn’t be able to do your job. You’re also in a type of work that requires the development of self-confident traits, like decisiveness, assertiveness, courage, backing yourself, leadership, and even a touch or more of ruthlessness.
It doesn’t remove your empathy, but it does transform it into something more efficient and practical.
I’ve known some highly empathetic people - in the emotional sense - and they quite simply struggle to function on a daily basis. They’re the ones who are devastated by the wars they see on the news, and are constantly wrapped up in the social dramas of their friends. If their parents are sick, an empath won’t be able to sleep for the worrying. If their child loses his favourite toy, the overly empathetic parent will grieve more than the kid does.
This kind of empathy is actually unhelpful, and is not evidence of greater morality. There must be some consideration of function when it comes to ethics, and if your emotional reaction to your principles is so intense that you can no longer function effectively, then the net result of your morality is a harmful outcome.
Confident people reduce their empathy for a number of reasons.
Firstly, we come to realise that nearly all human outcomes are a result of deterministic decision-making chains. If someone is suffering, the most likely reason for this is their own decisions have led to this moment. It’s rare that someone is harmed randomly and unfairly by the outside world - they have usually courted disaster with their previous decisions.
So while a confident person can understand that you’re in pain, they simultaneously can’t help but notice you probably got yourself into this mess. Not only that, confident people know that crisis, guilt, anger, discomfort and suffering are the true motivators. While you suffer, they know that it’s probably in your best interest, and in the long run it will benefit you. You’re not really being harmed when the bigger picture is considered.
Confident people are also responsible, meaning they focus on solutions rather than blame. When they see someone suffering, their earliest thoughts are about what that person could do to reduce their suffering and/or prevent similar tragedies from happening in the first place. Rather than pointing the finger and shouting “It’s not fair!” as most victim-minded people do, confident people immediately think, “So... what are you going to do about it?”
There’s also the knowledge that our quality of life comes from experiencing the full range of human emotions. Sadness, anger, anxiety, grief, confusion - these are all necessary experiences to become a fully actualised human (assuming you process and respond to them in a healthy way). Therefore, when a confident person sees you experiencing these feelings, they won’t automatically assume that something “bad” is happening to you. An overly empathetic person will try to "fix" your feelings, not noticing they are preventing you from fully experiencing healthy developmental events.
A confident person - especially someone who had to develop confidence manually - understands that we each are the masters of our own destinies, and that other people cannot do the work for us. So when they witness someone suffering, they don’t really get upset about it because they know that person has a choice as to how they’ll respond to this, and if they make the right choices they can become a stronger person in response to any disaster.
Of course, confident people also notice that most “suffering” comes from objectively minor inconveniences. In fact, if something genuinely and objectively “bad” happens to someone, a confident person will experience those sympathetic feelings. But most of the time, a person’s suffering is an error of perception more than an accurate reaction to objective harm.
If you’re mad that your partner didn’t text you back, your problem is more one of being unable to accept normal human behaviour. Nothing objectively harmful has actually occurred. If you’re sad that your favourite TV show got cancelled, that’s a failure to adapt to the inevitable changes and the fact that we do not get to have our preferences met most of the time.
It’s hard for a confident person to watch you overreact to benign events and feel sorry for you.
Lastly, a confident person knows it takes all their time, energy and attention just to manage their own integrity. They've come to the realisation that they can't save the world, or other people. They can only focus on doing their shit right and hope that has some ripple-out positive effect on others. They don't virtue-signal and try to get involved in every cause, because they don't want to commit to something they can't do much about.
So the next time you think a confident person is being “harsh” when they don’t cry about your misfortunes, or that they're "cold" when they don't care about what's on the news, or that they’re being “rude” when they don’t sugarcoat their communication with you, ask yourself, “Is their response funtional?” Because if so (i.e. you cannot prove with evidence that you have been harmed, or they're caring but stoic), then maybe their “lack of empathy” is really just a more rational and accurate view of things.
Thoughts?
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Confident people have LESS empathy?
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