[shadowmore]

I can confirm this anecdotally.

I've always had near zero empathy for anyone who isn't a close friend or family member, and I have very high pain tolerance, to the point of outright ignoring minor wounds on a regular basis and then finding them later (sounds edgy, actually majorly annoying finding unexpected blood stains on clothing or furniture, or realizing I have an eyesore of a bruise somewhere).

[rootusrootus]

> ignoring minor wounds on a regular basis and then finding them later

In my experience that's pretty common, especially among guys. It's a running joke with my wife that I'll be leaking blood without even knowing I cut myself. Or I know, and just don't really care. Several of my friends are similar. It does lead to awkward explanations sometimes. My wife still doesn't really understand how I can have a great big scabbed over wound or a nice big purple bruise with not the faintest idea when/where I did it.

I wouldn't say I'm low on empathy, either. But I hide it pretty well, bury it quite deep.

[meowface]

Don't know why you're being downvoted. Of course this is all anecdotal and armchair psychology/psychiatry/neuroscience/neuropharmacology, but there could plausibly be some kind of correlation, here, and every anecdote adds to the discussion, even if of course they shouldn't be taken as empirical support for the hypothesis.

I've seen research about how opiates seem to reduce perception of both physical and emotional pain, which may partly explain why some people in unfortunate situations may become addicted. Emotional pain isn't adjacent to empathy but isn't necessarily orthogonal, either. If there's anything to this, it makes me wonder if there could also be some correlation between opioid receptors and empathy, or even some sort of correlation between pain and emotions in general.

[jrumbut]

While we're talking anecdata, for the first ~30 years of my life I found absolutely no relief from acetaminophen for anything from illness to injury to random headaches.

A couple years ago my wife cajoled me to try taking it again, and I went from bed ridden to feeling poorly but able to function. Not a miracle cure but really helpful a few times a year. Is there any known association of age and acetaminophen effectiveness?

[3131s]

Anecdotally I used to be less empathetic but I took some steps to change that long ago.

But, high pain tolerance would still describe me even after that point... I've had broken ribs, broken fingers and toes, broken hand and wrist, chipped teeth, broken nose, seriously infected abrasions, large boils (now these fucking hurt), torn labrum on left shoulder, surgery on right shoulder with a really uncomfortable elastomeric pump, a few minor head injuries, minor fracture in one foot, cigarette tattoos, high-speed bike crashes with no protective gear, a perplexing squishy fluid sac under the sole of my foot from sprinting, etc.

I still feel pain but I would have to imagine that a pain-sensitive person might not get up to the same stuff that I do. It really depends on the type of pain.

The two most excruciating were dengue fever and a couple bouts with moderately-sized kidney stones. Dengue was worse, definitely earning its local name here of "bone-break fever" due to the intense and constant aching. Near the end there is a characteristic rash, which is mercy compared to the first 3-4 days. The whole experience left me physically destroyed for months! I returned to lifting weights after I thought I had recovered, but my one-rep max lifts were halved on every single movement and it took another month to return to the level I was at before.

[tomcam]

Would someone inclined to downvote the parent comment explain why?

[emerged]

My first instinct is it's people who have a high threshold for pain who don't appreciate being called out for a lack of empathy. But perhaps didn't have a rational defense to jump in and comment.

It would be interesting to hear a response from a downvoter contradicting this instinct.

[xwdv]

More likely, the people doing the downvoting have low thresholds for pain and do not want to see people with low empathy become normalized, as it would make their pains feel even worse.