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People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

sciencedaily.com

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Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#111

Post by idiotsecant »

omginternets wrote: post #107
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like something is going wrong here in your connecting a dog being off a leash with somehow empathy for the dog. If that dog bites someone it dies, how is that not empathetic? dogs are typically required to be on leashes in parks and public areas for a reason.

There is such a thing as a well-behaved dog. I don't see the social benefit of enforcing every last little law on the books all the time. I think laws (the kind we're talking about, anyway) are best seen as a tool for maintaining public order. If police encounter something dangerous or immediately disorderly, they can express their reasons for intervening in terms of laws. If you run open headers on your car and caus…

Ok, let's say your dog is well behaved. I think we can agree that lots of other people who think that their dog is well behaved actually have a dog that is potentially dangerous. How am I supposed to know by looking at you and your dog which it is? So now I get to feel in danger so that you can feel slightly more at home.

How does that make sense?

This is an excellent example of 'ridiculous government overreach' that actually makes perfect sense and some people just don't like.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#112

Post by anigbrowl »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #16
Yoric wrote: post #7

Anecdotal evidence: around me, several kids are on the autistic spectrum. It's hard to prevent them from intervening when they notice what they feel is an injustice, towards them or others. At some point, this included one of them regularly attempting to rescue babies from baby trolleys, which they considered a prison. Fortunately, the would-be rescuer was only aged 3 at the time.

I don’t think that concern for injustice is something universal or even necessarily widespread among autistic people. That is, I believe that there are plenty of autistic people who do not give a fuck, eschew social causes completely, feel misanthropic, etc. Rather, I think that the examples you encountered represent that segment of autistic people who do care, and due to the difficulty that autistic people have with…

difficulty that autistic people have with understanding social roles and social boundaries

In many cases those are understood just fine, but with the caveat that they're not optimal for every situation. There are times when it's appropriate to ignore those criteria (eg to prevent an injury or mitigate some immediate risk), and the people wringing their hands about what to do are unhelpful or even in the way.

More than once I've seen bystanders weirded out by an unpleasant situation stand there repeating 'someone should call 911' over and over without being able to complete the thought and do it themselves. I have enormous respect for the people who are sufficiently present to evaluate and situation and act in the moment, even if their actions are not always perfect; I have negative respect for the people who revert to infantile paralysis or try to dissuade others from acting int he absence of a recognizable authority figure.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#113

Post by user_7832 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #103

A pessimistic corollary to this is that intervention is often followed by social punishment if it impinges on anyone else's interests or even just makes the bystanders look bad.

I think taking any action makes you stand out, and if no one's doing anything you "conform" by not taking action too.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#114

Post by idiotsecant »

kstenerud wrote: post #25
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that concern for injustice is something universal or even necessarily widespread among autistic people. That is, I believe that there are plenty of autistic people who do not give a fuck, eschew social causes completely, feel misanthropic, etc. Rather, I think that the examples you encountered represent that segment of autistic people who do care, and due to the difficulty that autistic people have with…

Every autistic person I've met (and I've met a LOT of them) has this similar drive to stop injustice when they see it (regardless of how much they hate society in general).

As a fellow amateur batman fantacist and definite sperglord I think it's not so much about justice necessarily, as much as it is about the system. I need for the world to work on a rational systemic way to be comfortable and counter examples are deeply unsettling to me.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#115

Post by eyelidlessness »

mtreis86 wrote: post #44
Podgajski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I posted this study because I have Asperger’s and this is what was always said about my behavior. Yesterday I literally had to stop myself from sending photographs to the police of a guy walking his dog off leash in a park that has signs forbidding it. And my reason for wanting to call the police is because of my compassion for the dog or for anyone the dog to hurt. Not so much that it was only that the man was d…

I've never had a loose dog try to attack me. Plenty of dogs on leashes have lunged tho. So I treat the leash status as a signal of how much the owner trusts the dog to behave.

Not that I think there’s much credence to this signal as you’ve stated it, but it does have overlap with what I try to convey to people when I ask them to leash their own dog: it’s for the safety of their dog as much as it is for mine. In other words, as I’ve tried to explain it, “even if your dog is perfectly well behaved, you have no idea if my dog or any other you may encounter is a danger to your dog.”

This has been universally unconvincing to those dog owners who walk their dogs off leash. They don’t—in my experience—actually care if it puts their dog at risk, any more than they care about putting anyone else at risk. Anecdata still, but my experience tells me that whether a dog is leashed or not is mostly an indicator of whether the dog’s human is more concerned with the dog’s safety, or with their own selfish convenience.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#117

Post by anigbrowl »

RecycledEle wrote: post #8

[flagged]

They're not sociopaths. A lot of them are just very risk intolerant. Sociopaths tend to leverage or create a problem for their own gain, as opposed to just failing to help. Sure, if you see someone chuckling with glee while passively observing a dumpster fire, they might be a sociopath, but a lot of people are just scared or incapable of making decisions under pressure.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#118

Post by omginternets »

idiotsecant wrote: post #111
omginternets wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is such a thing as a well-behaved dog. I don't see the social benefit of enforcing every last little law on the books all the time. I think laws (the kind we're talking about, anyway) are best seen as a tool for maintaining public order. If police encounter something dangerous or immediately disorderly, they can express their reasons for intervening in terms of laws. If you run open headers on your car and caus…

Ok, let's say your dog is well behaved. I think we can agree that lots of other people who think that their dog is well behaved actually have a dog that is potentially dangerous. How am I supposed to know by looking at you and your dog which it is? So now I get to feel in danger so that you can feel slightly more at home. How does that make sense? This is an excellent example of 'ridiculous government overreach' that…

>How does that make sense?

In a word: discernment. If it's a miniature poodle, you can probably chill. If it's a big dog, it's probably worthwhile to enforce the law.

It actually is a pretty good example of overreach insofar as you're advocating the removal of any judgement call from the equation. That is the surest way to build a relentless bureaucratic machine that makes everyone miserable without actually protecting anyone.

The human in the loop is a feature, not a bug.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#119

Post by solardev »

nathan_compton wrote: post #116

I have mild autism (not entirely politically correct to describe it that way) without intellectual impairments and I frankly see normal people as disabled.

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." -George Carlin

The future is Wall-E...

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#120

Post by micromacrofoot »

scns wrote: post #48
Podgajski wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of dogs also like to bite people, or scare birds, or scare other dogs…. Just because something likes to do something does not mean we should let it do it.

A few dogs are so aggressive that they bite people. Usually the owner is the problem.

we weed out bad owners by requiring all dogs to be leashed, if you don’t like it move to a more rural area or don’t have a dog
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