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Youth Today: Obnoxious Fucktards

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College students today are 40% less empathetic than those of 30 years ago, with the numbers plunging primarily after 2000, according to a paper by Sara Konrath, researcher at the University of Michigan. The paper, "Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis," was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston.

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.

Today’s students scored significantly (48%) lower in empathic concern and perspective taking (34%). They are less likely to agree with statements like "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me" and "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective." These are considered shared social ideals: people are more likely to say they agree than they really do.

"We don't know what the causes are," Dr Konrath said. A mixture of video games, social media, reality TV, and hyper-competition may have left young people self-involved, shallow, and unfettered in their individualism and ambition. The implications are hardly superficial. Low empathy is associated with criminal behavior, violence, sexual offenses, aggression when drunk, and other antisocial behaviors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/fashion/27StudiedEmpathy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

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