That said, we may well be into a whole new generation who is past the whole sympathy/empathy/caritas/relating to thy fellow man thing. Who can forget "Amber lamps?"
Posted on 06/26/2010 6:33:30 AM PDT by reaganaut1
FED up with the Me-Me-Me MySpace generation? Inclined to believe today’s young ’uns are blindingly self-aggrandizing and entitled? According to a major new study of college students, you may well be right.
Vindication for crotchety Gen-Xers — already depressed to find themselves the elders in this social relationship — arrived in a paper presented in May at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston. “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” by Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than those of 30 years ago, with the numbers plunging primarily after 2000.
Previous studies have tussled over how to define empathy. Is it a cognitive mechanism through which we imagine how another person feels? A manifestation of sympathy? Do we empathize with others purely to reduce our own levels of stress?
The field has yet to settle on a definition. But for the purposes of this study, Dr. Konrath measured four aspects of “interpersonal sensitivity”: Empathic concern, or sympathy, over the misfortunes of others; perspective taking, an intellectual capacity to imagine other people’s points of view; fantasy or people’s tendency to identify imaginatively with fictional characters in books or movies; and personal distress, which refers to the anguish one feels during others’ misfortunes. (For example, “When I see someone who badly needs help in an emergency, I go to pieces.”)
Today’s students scored significantly lower in empathic concern (a 48 percent decrease) and perspective taking (34 percent), considered the more important indices of empathy. In a decisively everyone-for-themselves manner, they are less likely to agree with statements like “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bump
What else would anyone expect from an entire generation of punks raised by strangers in the day care centers.
“The implications are hardly superficial. Low empathy is associated with criminal behavior, violence, sexual offenses, aggression when drunk and other antisocial behaviors.”
A taxpayer funded “study” from an academic. The researcher had no clue what the results meant and repeated the standard politically correct cliches. Supposedly video games and reality TV are turning young people into uncaring sociopaths.
In reality something very scary is happening to young people. The rapid decline of faith and spirituality and the indoctrination of young people with twisted leftist values in the schools and through the MSM is having an effect. Not all young people are effected but many are. They are being encouraged to ridicule the values of their parents, the values that made this country great. They are encouraged to become self indulgent parasites who accomplish little or nothing but demand that they be given what they want and that someone else pay for it.
Another thing I notice is an apparent lack of common courtesy, ie, expressing appreciation for good deeds, or gifts received.
We have spent a goodly chunk of change recently on gifts for graduations, birthdays, and other occasions, sending flowers, cards with cash, etc.. It has been disheartening to not receive acknowledgement from some of them that the gifts, including cash, were even received, much less to get an expression of thanks or appreciation.
Hmmm... interesting that there is no mention of the dearth of acknowledging the Divine. I guess promoting instead the worship of mother earth doesn’t necessarily transfer to love for your fellow man...
Causation - or merely correlation?
I’d like to know how many of those young people are only children. Even one sibling can make a difference in how one understands their place in the world.
I must say, however, even with two in our family, it is a monumental task, all day, every day, to get the kids to think of others, and see how what they did might affect someone else. I have one in particular who is narcissistic and needs constant, very concrete, reminders that the world does not revolve around her. And the kids have almost no television, so I can only imagine what it’s like for people whose kids watch the sarcastic, materialistic, entitled kids on tv.
Some people are good at being kind. Those who are not need lots of hands-on training. When parents consider this as important as having kids with straight teeth, maybe it will happen.
I hear you, Lucy Jo.
I have dropped off my gift-giving list anyone who is so ignorant or ill-bred as not to send a written Thank-you note.
This includes some grandchildren.
Exactly.
Eat, drink and be merry - for tomorrow we may die (without any concern for making an account of ones life).
Gaia worship promotes moral relativity, not morality. One of the worst things that happened to kids was having God taken out of the schools.
Agreed
Great example from recent events personifying the idea. Kudos.
“a researcher at the University of Michigan, found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than those of 30 years ago, with the numbers plunging primarily after 2000.”
If you watch the movie, “Blade Runner” and/or read the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” on which the movie is based, the only way to determine the difference between the androids/genetically engineered humans was with an empathy test (called the Voight-Kampf). The androids did not have the ability to feel empathy and therefore felt nothing different between killing an insect or a human being.
Without empathy human beings just become narcissistic, self-centered children in adult bodies who could care less about how their actions affect others.
The goal of the Tyrell Corporation was to create androids that mimicked human beings so well that any empathy test could not detect them.
I think Philip K. Dick was quite prescient now that this study has been published.
“You hit the nail on the head. I would also add that many (most?) parents today are somewhat disengaged from their children. They provide for their material needs in abundance and make sure they succeed academically and in extracurriculars, but that’s it. Parents have their own social lives and don’t want to be troubled by spending large amounts of time interacting with their children.”
I think that is what happened with the Baby Boomer children as they grew up. Their parents worked and created wealth that was given to them but their parents forgot to give their children the spiritual wealth they needed. Now we can see the fruit of that in many ways today.
I guess this is the Novus Ordo Seclorum - A New Secular Age - that the Founding Fathers were look forward to for our country. An New Age without God, without empathy, compassion, and the other qualities that make us human, which would make it a New Dark Age.
The word “secular” is most closely related to the word in Hebrew that means “fool.”
I guess this will be the New Age of Fools.
Ah ha! Bush's fault!
An article like this is written about every upcoming generation by their elders. This young generation will be writing the same thing in 30 years.
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