On the other hand, someone on the autism spectrum may be able to emotionally empathize if they find it clear what the other person feels, but may not be able to cognitively intuit complicated webs of unspoken social relations and resulting feelings of many layers of "I expected him/her to know that I think he ...."
Yes exactly, I feel this could actually be further split to 3 mostly disjoint concepts:
1. Can I understand why person X would feel emotion Y in situation Z? People probably vary the most on this one when they themselves would not feel emotion Y in situation Z, because it becomes about how well they can put themselves in the shoes of someone with different values/priors (from a more cerebral perspective). There's also a difference between retroactive explanation and prediction of course, but without extensive knowledge on person X prediction can be very hard in the "gray areas" mentioned.
2. If I know that person X feels emotion Y, do I feel emotion Y myself? Again, most people probably have this for their closest friends/family, but the degree to which one has this for people they casually encounter seems to vary widely. Probably due to both inherent personality trait differences, and varying circumstances over time - for example if you currently have some intense mood for personal reasons it may be harder to feel an opposing mood because of someone else (but easier when it's the same mood maybe?)
My understanding is 1 is cognitive empathy and 2 is affective empathy, but I'm not as sure whether 2 encompasses all of affective empathy, because there is also:
3. Given limited information about the situation, can one still figure out the emotion someone is feeling? This allows empathy #2 to be applied more readily, and in cases where your actions are relevant (coworkers, friends, etc.) to investigate further and possibly apply empathy #1.
I'm not sure whether 3 is itself considered part of empathy, but certainly it is very important in being able to "use" your empathy in daily life, so it functionally is part of empathy. And this is likely the trait most frequently impaired in individuals on the spectrum, as it requires recognizing subtle, often non-verbal, behavioral cues. I'm not super up to date on the literature but I don't believe 1 or 2 above are considered to be impaired in most cases of Autism, and there definitely are articles out there about how it's incorrect to say those on the spectrum have low empathy.
It's hard to rate oneself accurately, but personally I would say I am above average at 1, average at 2, and below average at 3 (solid at little linguistic hints but horrible at picking up on facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, etc.)
