Studie stellt die Idee in Frage, dass hochintelligente Menschen hyperempathisch sind. Personen mit hohem intellektuellem Potenzial nutzen häufig eine Form der Empathie, die eher auf kognitiver Verarbeitung als auf automatischen emotionalen Reaktionen beruht. Sie können Gefühle intellektualisieren, um in intensiven Situationen die Fassung zu bewahren.
New review challenges the idea that highly intelligent people are hyper-empathic
19 Kommentare
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289625000388
From the linked article:
**New review challenges the idea that highly intelligent people are hyper-empathic**
A new scientific review challenges the popular assumption that highly intelligent people possess a naturally heightened capacity for feeling the emotions of others. The analysis suggests that **individuals with high intellectual potential often utilize a distinct form of empathy that relies heavily on cognitive processing rather than automatic emotional reactions**. Published in the journal Intelligence, the paper proposes that **these individuals may intellectualize feelings to maintain composure in intense situations**.
A central finding of the article involves the regulation of emotions. The authors describe a mechanism where cognitive control overrides emotional reactivity. Individuals with high intellectual potential typically possess strong executive functions. This includes inhibitory control, which is the ability to suppress impulsive responses. The review suggests that these individuals often use this strength to dampen their own emotional reactions. When they encounter a charged situation, they may unconsciously inhibit their feelings to analyze the event objectively.
This creates a specific empathic profile characterized by a dominance of cognitive empathy over emotional empathy. The person understands the situation perfectly but remains affectively detached. The authors note that this “intellectualization” of empathy can be an adaptive strategy.
It allows the individual to function effectively in high-stress environments where getting swept up in emotion would be counterproductive. However, this imbalance can also create social friction. It may lead others to perceive them as cold or distant, even when they are fully engaged in understanding the problem.
The authors discussed the developmental trajectory of these traits. They highlighted the concept of developmental asynchrony. This occurs when a child’s cognitive abilities develop much faster than their emotional coping mechanisms. A highly intelligent child might cognitively understand complex adult emotions but lack the regulatory tools to manage them. This gap can lead to the “intellectualization” strategy observed in adults. The child learns to rely on their strong thinking brain to manage the confusing signals from their developing emotional brain.
The review also addressed the overlap between high intelligence and other neurodivergent profiles. The researchers noted that the profile of high cognitive empathy and low emotional empathy can superficially resemble traits seen in autism spectrum disorder. However, they clarify a key difference.
In autism, challenges often arise from a difficulty in reading social cues or understanding another’s perspective. In contrast, highly intelligent individuals often read the cues perfectly but regulate their emotional response so tightly that they appear unresponsive.
I am not sure why anyone has to „challenge“ an idea which is not really prevalent? The stereotype of an intelligent person being completely out of touch with human emotions is so prevalent that it’s offensive – and it’s for example the premise of one of the most successful sitcoms of all time …
Don’t panic! Get ahold of yourself.
I have never heard of the high empathy thing with very intelligent people, usually the opposite. There’s not even a reference to it in the text. Kind of undermines the whole premise for me now.
> HIP typically refers to individuals with exceptional intellectual capacities, often defined by an intelligence quotient (IQ) score of 130 or above, though no universal consensus exists regarding its definition
Difficult to do a study when you can’t agree who you are studying..
I was gonna say that seems like me right up until the last sentence, then….nope
While not „highly intelligent“ I can get the argument, I feel like I have done similar most my adult life. Even having had multiple scenarios where I realized playing into the emotions would have a more positive outcome and kinda „letting loose“ the tears or anger in a controlled fashion.
I would be angry or sad in these scenarios for sure, but would be able to maintain a mostly stoic appearance as much as I would normally, but I realized it would be cathartic for other individuals involved to see me „break“ which would encourage them to also lose the mask.
Other times it’s utilizing stress to fuel progress, being mildly irritated is a powerful way for me to charge through a strenuous task.
I never heard of the idea that intelligence correlates with emotional empathy, nor could I think of a mechanism how that would relate.
I do believe that a lot of highly intelligent people are capable of cognitive empathy and understanding the complex nuances and relative impact of especially strong emotions on human behavior. As well as having the capacity to suspend judgment and try and understand the reality of the person opposite of them.
That said. I know plenty of highly intelligent people without an empathetic bone in their body and very judgmental and dismissive attitudes.
Word-salad-stupid-and-obvious-study
I feel like what’s regarded as „high intelligence“ in society is always going to be clashing with high empathy.
We only tend to regard high analytical and logical ability as intelligence. Which I feel like it’s the problem. Cause of course individuals who are very good at that, don’t tend to be good at more emotional stuff.
Interesting angle, but this seems to hinge on how empathy is defined. If empathy is measured emotionally rather than cognitively, could this be reframing emotional regulation as lower empathy?
Also curious how culture and context were controlled.
The real empathy _is_ the „form of empathy that relies on cognitive processing rather than automatic emotional reactions“. The Deanna-Troi-type stuff is a lizard-level substitute that constantly screws up.
“ General society often views people with high intellectual potential as hypersensitive or “hyper-empathic.” This stereotype suggests that a high intelligence quotient, or IQ, comes packaged with an innate ability to deeply feel the pain and joy of those around them.”
Source needed
please do not call me out like that…
though I’m not exactly sure who had this idea in the first place, in fact the stereotype has often been the opposite. in fact in a lot of media there’s this trope of a super intelligent (often autistic coded) person learning to empathize through intellectualizing emotions.
What about ‘intelligent’ autistics who can read social cues?
If you think about writers, designers, doctors, architects, lawyers, people in corporate environments being able to see other people’s perspective allows you to understand their needs or how they will react to your book, closing argument, prodcut etc and helps you do your job better.
Intelligent people regulate emotion response, this is hardly news is it?
This seems like a rather arbitrary definition of what empathy „truly“ is, and what motivation is. It’s attempting to moralize strategies in a way that involves enormous leaps of assumption, leaps that reflect an extremely shallow view of what empathy is, AND an extremely confusing base hypothesis that makes no sense. One cannot instantly insist cognitive effort equals lack of emotional sensation. One cannot seriously imply capacity for emotional regulation means baseline emotion is fundamentally less either, which seems to be an easy way to sidestep uncomfortable truths.
I would argue the actual „idea“ is the precise bias the researchers are showing: „smart people are all cold and calculated and don’t feel things. Somehow their empathy must not be legitimate, and impulsive empathy (based on similarity) must be superior.“ People frame this because they feel inadequate when „automatic“ empathy does not align with actual moral behavior, which is just reality, and need to justify their disinterest in cognitively engaging with empathy as an active process. This is less about intelligence, and more about overreliance on impulse alone. Both have applications in the human experience, and are not at odds, but symbiotic.
Empathy takes effort to be effective for any human on this planet. Pretending any one person is magically given this automatic perfect prosocial impulse is the actual poor assumption. This strategy is one of the core drivers of marginalization in larger social construct. It’s time to stop glamorizing it.
This depends on how you define empathy or which form of empathy you think is important. My understanding is that there’s a good argument to be made that the more cognitive form of empathy is actually the better one. The reason is that trying to actually put yourself in someone else’s world and understand what things mean to them is a cognitive exercise rather than just an automatic emotional one. Relying just on an automatic emotional reaction can actually make it harder to accurately understand what it’s like to be the other person and what things mean to them.