This is my response to the article on this URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100528/sc_livescience/todayscollegestudentslackempathy

Are today’s college students less capable of feeling empathetic towards others, much less act upon those feelings?  Nearly 72  studies conducted on college students between 1979 and 2009 indicate, not likely.   What exactly is empathy?  It is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. 

Sara Konrath, one of the specialists in the study that yielded these findings, is an affiliate with the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.  She described our generation, known as “ generation me”, as “one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history,”

I’ve noticed my generation to be almost completely oblivious to others.  I call it tunnel vision.  Something typical with our age group, (which I believe was supposed to end around high school senior year) is our tendency to do stupid things without considering the consequences of our choices.  this is especially true regarding consequences that affect others, and not ourselves. 

If that’s not enough, the bulk of our generation has lost a sense of accountability for our own actions.  Case in point: when students take out their anger on tow truck drivers after their car gets towed under legitimate and reasonable circumstances.

I’m not talking about rash decisions like drinking, driving at unsafe speeds, or shoplifting.  I’m talking about things like leaving your trash in a classroom, a complete or partial disregard for rules//regulations, scratching up someone’s car without leaving your contact information, not de-icing your windows on your car cause you’re late to class (then wondering how that pedestrian came out of nowhere)…well, the list goes on. 

The point is that I find the claims in this article to be accurate.  How about the students on the BYU campuses?  Are they doing better?  When I got stranded in one of Colorado’s nastiest blizzards, and ended up in  Boulder, the university students I interacted with were extremely generous. 

I stopped one guy in an attempt to locate a hotel just in case my friend Andrea never got back to me.  At this point in time, it was snowing mildly, and the bulk of the storm was yet to come.  He made a few calls to some friends to see if anyone could house me for the night.

I was given a place to chill and met quite a few people, until I finally got a hold of my friend.  Long story short, the students there were very welcoming, and they made the BYU-I student body look cold and unwelcoming.  The next two days there were extremely pleasant, and the sledding was fun.  Is Boulder above average?  Why isn’t Rexburg?

In our defense, what are they basing these findings on?  What is considered “unfortunate”?  What about the context of “feeling sorrowful for others because of their misfortunes”?  What about our generation?  Many would argue that our society has become weaker in terms of dealing with stress, anxiety, trauma, and hardships.

Does having no sorrow for a 300 pound woman who had a poor diet make you less empathetic?  Should we feel terrible for a drunk driver, who barely survived hitting a tree on a BAC of 0.17? Quite honestly, I don’t.  Does that make me less empathetic? 

I think it’s better a drunk driver cause his own injuries and/or death as opposed to injuring or killing someone else.  This makes me look less empathetic.  Then again, does it?  Is it right to sympathize with  someone who chose to get drunk and put others at great risk?

Most would agree with their findings.  Regardless of possible inaccuracies of the report, it doesn’t negate the findings.  What do you think?  Has society changed? Are we an indication of a turn in another direction?