 What better way to open the week than with some Wagner glorious Monday to all of you shoshanim and shoshanot and today I'm going to embark on a mission impossible to make myself even a bigger hate figure than I already am and I'm going to do this by referring to scientific studies that prove repeatedly over at least ten years that number one people on the autism spectrum disorder lack empathy exactly like narcissists and psychopaths and yes of course I've been saying it for many years number two so-called empaths are actually narcissists and psychopaths who engage in deceptive virtual signaling and yes of course I've been saying this also for many years but now I'm adding to a corpus of videos that I've already made with two new additional studies there are dozens by now but two new additional studies I do recommend that you watch my recent video about victimhood competitive victimhood and my previous videos about autism spectrum disorder compared to cluster B personality disorders especially high-functioning autism spectrum disorders okay got the picture I wish you a bumpy ride and let us delve right into what I have to tell you okay there's this new study it's authored by one-tricked t-r-i-g-t colonisi Jorgensen Nikolich and others it is titled autistic traits and self-conscious emotions in early childhood was published in childhood development recently few weeks ago I'm gonna read to you from the abstract self-conscious emotions arise from evaluating the self through the eyes of other people given that children with autistic traits may experience difficulties with understanding other people's minds they might show less attuned self-conscious emotions so self-conscious emotions include guilt embarrassment and shame and so on so forth shame leads sometimes to avoidance and sometimes to other reactions so there was this experiment and in the experiment the experimenter pretended that the kids broke his toy the experimenter was playing with a toy and then he said to the kids oh my god you broke my toy he shamed them and named them and so there was data the experiment lasted almost a year and a half and was repeated very often here are the conclusions in the abstract children with more autistic traits showed less theory of mind theory of mind is the long phrase for mentalization the ability to perceive or conceive of other people's minds and what makes them tick okay so children with more autistic traits showed less theory of mind and more shame like avoidance but associations were not mediated by theory of mind in other words the children's tendency to avoid shame were not the outcome of their inability to perceive other people's minds this provides say the authors this provides initial evidence that children with more autistic traits may show disturbances in some but not all self conscious emotions which could hinder their social functioning nothing new here this has been established in numerous studies in the past but never with young young young children like two years old three years old four years old all the previous studies were conducted on adolescents and adults not on and on children but like nine-year-old children eight-year-old children not two and three and four-year-old children so what the researchers in this particular experiment have done they wanted to find out whether autistic traits are associated with a deficit in theory of mind whether autistic traits make render the child incapable of understanding other people's mental states and predicting their behaviors and whether deficits in the theory of mind deficits in mentalization are related to the experience of self-conscious emotions with emphasis on shame like avoidance remember conscious self-conscious emotions include guilt include many elements of empathy actually one could say that self-conscious emotions are the foundation of empathy empathy is predicated on self-conscious emotions like guilt and shame and embarrassment and so on so forth if you lack those emotions you're extremely unlikely to have emotional empathy you may be able to have what I call called the empathy which includes reflexive or instinctual empathy and cognitive empathy but you will never have full-fledged empathy because you must have to in order for you to have a full-fledged empathy you must have an emotional component autistic children seem to be unable to conceive of other people and their emotions and so on and so forth the results of this study showed that children with higher level of autistic traits did demonstrate a clear deficit in their ability to perceive other people's mental states in other words in their ability to empathize in their ability to construct a theory of mind additionally autistic traits were positively associated in the study with verbal shame like avoidance I will explain this in a minute now there is definitely a need there was a lacuna there was a need to understand or conceptualize the relationship between autistic traits and self-conscious emotions in very very young children because that's where it all starts the formative years astoundingly no one studied the formative years in in autism spectrum disorders when it comes to guilt and shame and empathy and avoidance and so on critical features of the formative years self-conscious emotions such as guilt embarrassment and shame play a crucial role in social interactions they motivate pro-social behaviors or when they are absent they inhibit pro-social behavior when people transgress when they misbehave when they act out or they when they break more ease and rules of conduct and conventions and norms when they act non-normatively when people transgress self-conscious emotions are automatically triggered and they are known colloquially as conscience actually so when you when you do something bad when you do something you shouldn't shouldn't have done and then you feel shame you're not likely to repeat it you feel guilty you're likely to offer some amends or try to make amends or somehow recompense so so these emotions self-conscious emotions are the ones that regulate and maintain social relationships and minimize transgression transgressions misconduct misbehavior via a form of disinhibition and negative reinforcement so previous research has conclusively demonstrated disturbances in self-conscious emotions in older children and in adults with autism spectrum disorders this is beyond debate I'm sorry to tell you this older children about the age of six and adults with autism spectrum disorder lack empathy they have extreme deficits or deficiencies in empathy they are comparable to some types of borderline personality disorder and even narcissistic style or narcissism this is known this is not debatable anymore it may not be palatable it's not politically correct and everyone online present themselves as victims and perfect and beyond reproach and empathic and loving and caring that's online hype and BS psychology is merciless because it pursues the truth the truth is often inconvenient to quote Al Gore okay but what we didn't know is whether these disturbances present in early childhood and whether they are related to autistic traits in early childhood and the answer is now yes they are autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition it is characterized by significant deficits in social interaction reduce social awareness and communication inability to decipher social social and much later sexual cues restricted emotional engagement reduced affect display stereotype behavior patterns and concrete thinking and communication speech acts children with autism spectrum disorder display severe impairments in their capacity to consider the thoughts and emotions of other people they are unable to construct a theory a theory as to how other people think what other people feel what makes other people think what are the dynamics and motivations of other people and how other people fit into the environment social or otherwise this is known as theory of mind and the process is known as mentalization and it's absent literally absent in autism spectrum disorder disorders and of course this leads to severe disturbances in self-conscious emotions post transgressive behavior the old people someone with autism spectrum disorder misbehaves egregiously and then is unable to experience shame or guilt and when he does experience shame he avoids it verbally or otherwise he shuns he shuns the self-conscious emotions in Israeli embarrassed if a child fails to comprehend that they have broken a norm transgress transgress against the conventions of society if they fail to understand that they've hurt someone someone else's feelings someone else's interests someone else's property this kind of children cannot feel guilty or embarrassed they may experience shame and they experience shame because of the reactions of other people and then when they experience shame they display withdrawal or avoidant behaviors gradually over the years many of these people many of these children develop narcissistic defenses to the point of narcissistic personality disorder in a small minority of them narcissistic defenses simply are a form of alloplastic defenses narcissistic defense means other people are the problem they are deficient something's wrong with them I'm okay I'm all right I'm perfect I've done nothing wrong it's a form of shame avoidance or shame withdrawal studies investigating the association between autistic traits and self-conscious emotions now prove conclusively in all age groups that there are fewer signs of guilt and more signs of shame mind you it is still unclear when these disturbances develop exactly what are the underlying mechanisms are they neurological are they environmental are they genetic but we don't know enough we know very little about autism strangely as autism has been first described 90 years ago that's like nine zero years ago and we know very little about autism same with narcissism first described 110 years ago we still know very little about narcissism it's the disgrace of the profession in the new study shana van trit and her colleagues they investigated these relationships between autistic traits if self-conscious emotions and remember there's no empathy without a theory of mind there's no empathy without self-conscious emotions period so if autistic children lack a theory of mind and the lack most self-conscious emotions at the best in the best case they have extremely impaired empathy and really in reality they lack empathy exactly like narcissists it also raises interesting questions about narcissists someone should study children who are exposed to abuse and trauma between the ages of two and four and see whether they are whether they traverse the same developmental trajectory as children with autistic spectrum disorder with autism spectrum disorder so it could be that children at these ages children fail to develop a theory of mind fail to understand or to read read appropriately other people fail to experience shame and guilt shame because they avoid it and guilt because they simply don't experience it they don't have such a thing it's possible that children idios what i call idiosyncratic children children with problems mental health problems neurodevelopmental problems problems in the environment they're being abused traumatized and so it's possible that this is the typical reaction to idiosyncrasy it is as if the child says i'm special i'm special because i am not i'm rejected i'm ostracized by society by my peers by my parents and so only special children are rejected by society and so they develop narcissistic defenses the children the child says my mother rejects me she's a dead mother yes she rejects me or she breaches my boundaries or she won't let me separate or she hates me or she loves me too much or whatever all these are forms of abuse and the child says what it must mean that i'm special i think autistic children undergo this exact same process even though they feel to some extent inferior damaged and broken they convert this into uniqueness they say yeah i'm a special child you know we have this special needs special needs children this special element so i think narcissistic defenses are provoked very early on in children who are idiosyncratic and when they say idiosyncratic it doesn't have to be autistic doesn't have to be an abuse child it could be an immigrant child it could be a child who is exposed to racism systemic racism or peer racism it could be a child who is obese it could be a child who is gifted a child who stands out a child who never fits in a child who cannot conform for whatever reason neurodevelopmental reason environmental reason you name it intellectual reason intellectually challenge children as well i mean this kind of children would tend to develop a theory of themselves an internal working model which renders them special and so this needs this hypothesis of mine needs to be tested we need to see whether children who are about to become narcissists in adulthood are indistinguishable from children with autism spectrum disorder i believe that they are i believe you can't tell the difference at age two or age four now the researchers were faced with a dilemma they needed to separate what we call confounding factors factors that affect each other and contaminate the picture there's no pure situation so for example higher levels of autistic traits correlate with reduced guilt and embarrassment they also correlate with increased shame avoid shame-based avoidance and withdrawal but do these deficits do these problems are they associated with the inability to form a theory of mind because both are present and it's very difficult to say whether there's causation correlation or whether these two phenomena are related somehow to a higher level third phenomenon so they found that children with more autistic traits showed more verbal shame-like avoidance meaning what they mean is that they tended this kind of children tended to verbally withdraw or avoid social interactions or situations after they have committed a transgression they did something wrong and then they just ran away they avoided other people they didn't want to talk to anyone there was a because they didn't want to feel shame they didn't feel guilty they didn't feel even embarrassed but they did not want to be shamed by other people they wanted to avoid the consequences of their actions sounds familiar yes narcissists and psychopaths there was also some evidence of non-verbal shame-like avoidance but it was not statistically significant so we're going to ignore it the study it's important to emphasize that the study did not support the idea or the hypothesis that children with more autistic traits experience less guilt and embarrassment after doing something wrong than normally in other words it seems that the level of guilt and embarrassment in people with autism spectrum disorder is stable it's not reactive to having done something wrong let me tell you what it means in plain english politically incorrect as i can make it these children have no conscience that's why they don't feel guilty they don't feel guilty when they do something wrong they don't feel guilty when they don't do something wrong they just don't feel guilty period the researchers also found that children with more autistic traits had reduced theory of mind abilities as i told you but the disturbances in self-conscious emotions as i said at the beginning they were not directly related to this so it looks like the inability to experience guilt and shame are constitutional they are not the outcome of the inability to empathize with other people they are not the outcome of the inability to make to create a theory about other people to put yourself in other people's shoes no it's just a built-in hardwired inability to experience guilt and embarrassment here again at proposing a proposed study psychopaths are like this the developmental trajectory of psychopathy between the ages of two and four the developmental trajectory of narcissism between the age of two and four and the developmental trajectory of children with autism spectrum disorders between the ages of two and four they all strike me as identical so there must be a common denominator here what is it neurological brain abnormality genetic environmental what exactly creates the same psycho psychological psychopathological outcomes when theoretically the pathology is different autism is not psychopathy psychopathy is not narcissism yes psychopathy is not narcissism don't listen to self-styled experts online they are blabbering nonsense so these are three different conditions and yet they have so many commonalities in early childhood that it's shocking they're almost indistinguishable developmentally overall the findings of this study suggest that children with more autistic traits may experience difficulties in some self-conscious emotions particularly shame-like avoidance but not necessarily in guilt and embarrassment this wouldn't bother them because they don't experience it and these disturbances in self-conscious emotions may be related to autistic traits but they are not solely explained by a deficit in theory of mind there's something else at work and the same thing the same mysterious x-factor is at work in narcissism in the development of narcissism and the development of psychopathy and possibly borderline as well these are amazingly important findings I think even the authors themselves don't fully grasp what it is that they've stumbled across there's all social interactions these disorders are relational narcissism psychopathy these are relational disorders they reflect social or deficits and deficiencies in social interactions and this is the core problem in autism spectrum disorders understanding other people's perspectives needs emotions cognitions intentions motivations there's a failure here in all three conditions which ostensibly are not related but here they are phenomenologically definitely related there's a positive association between autistic traits and verbal shame-like avoidance and lack of guilt and embarrassment there's an identically positive correlation or association between narcissistic traits and verbal shame-like avoidance and lack of guilt and embarrassment the same goes for psychopaths and all three experience experience harsh overriding overpowering difficulties in social interactions and social functioning something to look into one should think okay so people with autism spectrum disorders lack empathy exactly like narcissists and psychopaths let the hate fest begin all the haters this is your cue next i'm going to make an even bigger group of enemies empaths so-called empaths the self-aggrandizing self-infatuated group of wannabe victims have been big victims would be victims online there's a new study which tends to support what i've been saying for six years and yes to the best of my knowledge i've been the first to say it empaths are in all likelihood covert narcissists failed covert narcissists collapse covert narcissists covert narcissists would have been abused by overt grandiose narcissists and by psychopaths i'm not taking away the facts of the abuse or these people have been victimized probably but the way they react to having been victimized is narcissistic and psychopathic because they are narcissists and according to the most recent study they are also psychopaths i repeat this empaths are self-styled victims and they leverage their victimhood to coerce people to manipulate people to deceive people the entire empaths community is exactly this supergalactic supernova empaths included and there's a recent study that tends to support this and the study is titled one minute give me a minute the study is titled signaling high sensitivity to influence others initial evidence for the roles of reinforcement sensitivity sensory processing sensitivity and the dark triad the study was authored by Martina Kaijik and Mauchin Moron although he's they're not morons so the study simply says that what we call empaths are actually narcissists and psychopaths who engage in deceptive virtually virtual signaling yes vacuum vindicated and others now in my footsteps so the study suggests that high sensitivity label is used by narcissists and psychopaths is a manipulative tactic the study was published in psychological reports and it says that labeling oneself as highly sensitive person which is not a clinical label by the way it's not a clinical entity highly sensitive person it's a suggested construct popular hype more or less okay a bit like the inner child or emotional flashbacks and so on so or quiet borderline okay so this label self-applied self-imputed label i'm a highly sensitive person is often a manipulative tactic used by individuals with dark personality traits particularly narcissism and psychopathy and i quote to sway others behavior and to gain advantages the researchers conducted this study to better understand the construct known as sensory processing sensitivity that's the clinical term sensory processing sensitivity it refers to individual differences in sensitivity to external and by the way internal stimuli so emotional dysregulation in borderline personality disorder is a form of sensory processing sensitivity in this sense borderlines can say that they are empaths and yet empaths claim to have been victimized by borderlines so and this trait of sensory processing sensitivity is popularly relabel what's popularly relabel online as highly sensitive person in public discourse there's even a book about highly sensitive people and it erroneously of course claims that 20% of the population are highly sensitive that's nonsense that's absolute nonsense it's not lower close to 20% and such individuals identify as highly sensitive on online for online forums expressing a need and may i add a coercive demand to be treated specially special care special understanding and concessions does it strike a chord it should because narcissists are entitled narcissists demand special care they narcissists have special needs and narcissists require special concessions and understanding this study aimed to investigate the associations between sensitivity to external stimuli and the tendency to signal high sensitivity to other people and it took into account and it's not the first study which which does this by the way i recommend that you watch my video on competitive victimhood where i cite 10 other studies who actually reach the same conclusions so this particular study took into account dark triad personality traits now mind you dark triad is not the same as narcissism and psychopathy dark triad personality includes subclinical narcissism narcissistic traits and style that cannot that do not amount to full-fledged narcissistic personality disorder subclinical psychopathy psychopathic behaviors and traits that do not amount to psychopathy and machiavellianism machiavellianism the ability and tendency to manipulate other people in order to obtain favorable outcomes a form of self-efficacy so these scholars these researchers studied highly sensitive people i'm using the the media hype online label so they studied highly sensitive HSPs and then they delved deeper and asked themselves are these people narcissists and psychopaths and they correlated narcissism and psychopathy with signaling signaling highly sensitive people who keep signaling i'm a victim i'm super sensitive i'm amazingly delicate you should treat me with with the kid gloves should respect me you should make concessions because i'm brittle and i'm broken and i'm damaged and i'm amazing and i'm fantastic and i'm supernova and all other disgusting manipulative virtual signaling deceptive practices which narcissists and psychopaths do on a daily basis online and offline the researchers hypothesize two possibilities assertive signaling of specific needs for individuals genuinely expressed a sensitivity in order to alert others to their unique situational needs these are people who say broadcast i'm sensitive please take this into account when you interact with me so this is called assertive signaling of specific needs and it is contrasted with deceptive signaling with the expression of high sensitivity is used to manipulate other people it's a manipulative strategy and i'm going to quote from the study due to the advantages that could be achieved as a result of signaling victimhood the public displays of one's weakness and oppression by personal limitations might be considered as a two-sided social strategy on the one hand it could help individuals with particular sensitivities neurotics that's in the study not my word neuroticism to better satisfy their needs in everyday social interactions on the other hand listen well a number of studies showed that victimhood signaling was also used as a deception strategy by individuals high in the dark triad namely narcissism Machiavellianism and psychopathy traits it's pretty unequivocal and so the researchers found a weak association between sensory processing sensitivity and signaling high sensitivity to influence other people it means that there are people out there who are sensitive they have high they score high on sensory processing sensitivity but these kind of people are actually less likely to signal their sensitivity they're likely to be loners schizoids avoids avoid other people withdraw protect themselves against over stimulation they're not likely to go online and seek additional stimulation they're not likely to troll they're not likely to to have fights with other people online they're not likely to make a public display of themselves they're not extroverted they're introverted they're terrified they they're overstimulated they're in pain constantly the last thing they want is to interact with thousands of other people no way the very fact that someone is online rules out almost rules out the possibility that it's a truly highly sensitive person individuals who score high on sensory processing sensitivity it reflects a heightened depth of stimulus processing and awareness of subtleties in the environment these people are like constantly traumatized like death by a thousand cuts it's like they have no skin their nerve endings are exposed to the environment without any any isolation or firewall and they don't signal this sensitivity to others no way definitely not more frequently and online that's nonsense there was a statistically significant association between signaling high sensitivity to influence other people and behavioral inhibition system sensitivity BIS sensitivity BIS sensitivity is related to the tendency to respond to aversive or threatening stimuli with caution and inhibition and so it seems that there is a correlation between the wish to signal victimhood in order to manipulate other people and affect them somehow make them do your bidding coarsen them into um satisfying your entitlement so there's a correlation between this and the tendency to respond to threats and aversive situations with caution and inhibition but the correlation is very weak the association is weak it's statistically significant but it's weak it seems that many of the empaths for lack of a better word online are at the same time also aversive to threats and risks they're cautious now this is not a typical psychopathic trait but it is a typical trait of narcissists i have breaking news for you narcissists are cowards total cowards the craven everyone knows that bullies are cowards and it's true it's just not just a platitude or a cliche it's absolutely true bullies are cowards and the vast majority of bullies are narcissists narcissists are cowards so they're likely to try to manipulate other people via deceptive signaling lie to them that they are victims or even self-perceive as victims narcissists believe their own bs they believe their own confabulations and their own fantasies and constructs so there could be narcissists online who firmly believe that they have been victimized and therefore they are victims the world's biggest victims ever of course because they are narcissists but they when they do so they are aware of threats and risks in the environment and are trying to avoid them and this is even further proof of narcissism to my mind among empaths there is a positive association a much stronger positive association between signaling high sensitivity to influence others and the behavioral approach system bs bs is related to reward responsiveness it reflects an individual's motivation to seek positive outcomes positive reinforcements and rewards it's a dopamine thing kind of dopaminergic thing and so um this kind of person would use victimhood signaling signaling of high sensitivity in order to secure rewards to secure pleasure narcissistic supply positive outcomes sex power over a group of people in a forum for example is a moderator or whatever these individuals with high reward responsiveness are more likely to engage in in self-presentational strategies such as signaling high sensitivity in order to gain positive reactions and outcomes from others to finagle benefits from others individuals with higher scores on dark personality so i want to quote to you something individuals with higher scores on dark personality traits especially narcissism and psychopathy were more likely to engage in signaling high sensitivity to influence others these findings supports the deceptive signaling hypotheses indicating that the expression of high sensitivity can be a manipulative interpersonal strategy employed by grandiose and callous individuals to gain advantage in social interactions i couldn't have said it better myself i continue it suggests i'm quoting it suggests that individuals with dark personality traits may use the perception of high sensitivity as a means of garnering sympathy or obtaining special treatment from other people this result showed that signaling high sensitivity is also a deceptive interpersonal strategy used by grandiose and callous manipulators and this is a quote from the study not my words i swear the study suggests that signaling high sensitivity to influence other people is a complex phenomenon not everyone there is a full-fledged narcissist and psychopath but i dare to venture i go on a limb here and say that the vast majority of them if not all of them have narcissistic traits and psychopathic traits and definitely they display narcissistic behaviors if not psychopathic behaviors and so some highly sensitive individuals may seek help online i would find it very shocking very much against type but maybe maybe there are a few three percent five percent but the majority and i'm quoting again particularly those with high reward responsiveness and dark personality traits may use it as a calculated tactic to elicit specific responses from others and now i am i have become definitely the number one hate figure on the internet i'll drink to that and yes i've read all your comments that i'm encouraging alcoholism cheers