I think those experiments showed clearly that having a lot of power over powerless people tends to produce a lack of empathy. I've seen this discussed in many different historical contexts.
But the question is, does lack of empathy facilitate having control in personal relationships? I don't think so - as long as you separate empathy from emotional investment, and particularly from emotional control, as you alluded to further on in your post.
I would not say yes, because they're clearly two different things, but I would not say not as well. Not because of lack of empathy particularly, but what this might imply. Emotions are an investment in somebody/something. By following this logic, having empathy towards somebody makes them easier to influence you, grabbing frame, and so on. This lack of empathy should be compensated with other traits, most of the time found in the dark triad traits.
So in my opinion, a slightly less empathy could make one keeping his frame better than somebody who has his emotions twisted. I don't think it's the healthiest way to run a relationship.
I want to say that this logic may be flawed, but it's something I ve discovered along the time. Especially in short terms relationships.
Or I'm just misinterpreting empathy with sympathy, as
@Chase said, tho I think they're sure corelated.
I personally think that's a good thing - I am attracted to women who judge men and don't give their love and respect easily, in fact I think most men instinctively gravitate to this as something valuable, though few are capable of maintaining frame within it. When she's honest and capable of communicating her signals from a submissive frame (i.e. not being annoying and overbearing), a woman like that can produce some incredibly fast growth. There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of having a woman point out all your mistakes, fixing them, and then fucking her afterward.
For sure, it's feeling like a winning to know that you're still in charge. That's how I see it. Funny how she still sees you as a leader, and making the assumption that you're be better next time by making those little correction/little drama as I m calling them. An opportunity to become better and making a better impression in your woman's eyes. Problematic would be if she wouldn't tell you at all, checking you out.
Very true. Empathy is not the same as emotional investment, it's just that empathy without self-control tends to produce mirrored emotions that can be difficult to separate from one's own.
So here I disagree a little bit as it's not emotional investment. It's not that emotional investment, technically speaking. That's my first point actually, the inability to separate personal emotions from the ones generated by empathy could mean frame change which isn't an optimal thing, if not recognized.
That said I think there's a bit of confusion in the way that the mainstream portrays people displaying low empathy. I think they are not actually unemotional, but their emotions are compressed and somewhat submerged under the surface of their conscious experience. But that's a bit off topic.
This is actually interesting. How's to be low empathy and high empathy, and more from it, that type of persons and maybe a diagram can be displayed, running axes with Empathy/Power(as individual/power of will/status/etc) and adding also Sympathy, making it tridimensional. Could recognize some human patterns(Leader/Dictator/etc)
What do you mean by the reciprocal here?
If a lack of empathy can generate power. But reading it again, I don't think you mean that.
It happens on forums too. As a regular poster you aren't thinking too much about how the top guys are thinking. You might have some thoughts about it, but they're going to tend to be caricatures drawn from sweeping assumptions about them. But when you're one of the guy's running the place you need to be paying close attention to how everyone else is thinking, because if not, there will soon be a disconnect between the way you manage the forum and how the folks on the forum care to use it, and once that is the case you will start hearing about it from everybody.
I was thinking about your personal case as well, as owner of the site and the style of responding to objections/challenges, having a higher EQ virtually to keep the direction of forum ahead. Almost the same dynamics as in real socials.
As you go up, you have fewer and fewer peers, and possibly no superiors, and everyone beneath you is putting you on a pedestal or going the opposite way and demonizing you or viewing you as some sort of caricature of yourself. Just like in relationships... you get the girl complaining you "don't really understand her" over some little tiny thing, when you can just sit there and tell her all about herself and she will nod her head and say "You totally get it; you're right; yes, that's so right", meanwhile she is unable to do that for you.
Felt that on my own, in my past LTR when I was waiting for my gf to understand me and see things from my point of view as I was doing with her, trying to understand her, and then making her trying to understand me. I think I was asking for too much sometimes, seeking the equality in relationship.
One other note... I don't recall if the Stanford study differentiated between the concepts of empathy and sympathy, but I don't believe it did, and I think what you were really seeing there was a lack of sympathy rather than a lack of empathy.
True here, I might be misinterpreted them. Even so, I think I saw even a study making this claim about empathy. Google search is full of this also.
I bet had you taken prisoners and guards aside and asked each to get inside the other's head and tell you what the other was thinking, the guard would have a clearer idea about how the prisoner was actually thinking; meanwhile, the prisoner I'd expect to have an extreme/idealized version of the guard thoughts ("He probably thinks he's so big and mighty and enjoys lording it over me" --> when in actual fact the guard is likely to be thinking "Man, gotta get this prisoner to fall in line again. Hey, when's lunch?").
This is interesting. I assume they were regular prisoners, not some top socials prisoners from there, who ran the place.
Alpha13SC