Care·less

People have been saying they could care less, when, logically, they mean they couldn’t care less.

The phrase "I couldn’t care less" originated in Britain and made its way to the United States in the 1950s. The phrase "I could care less" appeared in the US about a decade later.

In 1990s, the well-known Harvard professor and language writer Stephen Pinker argued that the way most people say could care less — implies they are being ironic or sarcastic.

Regardless of the reason people say they could care less, it is one of the more common language. To say “care less means you has a bit of caring left”, which is not what seem the intention of the speaker. The proper "couldn’t care less" is still the dominant form, but "could care less" has been steadily gaining ground since its appearance in the 1960s.

Definitions:

1. Taking insufficient care; negligent : a careless housekeeper; careless proofreading.

2. Marked by or resulting from lack of forethought or thoroughness : a careless mistake.

3. Showing a lack of consideration : a careless remark.

4. Unconcerned or indifferent; heedless : careless of the consequences.

5. Unstudied or effortless : dancing with careless grace.

6. Exhibiting a disposition that is free from cares; cheerful l: a careless grin; a careless wave of the hand.

HUMANS ARE UNLIKELY to win the world’s prize for the fastest, the strongest or the largest, but are world champions at understanding one another. This interpersonal mastery is fueled, partly, by empathy: the tendency to care about and share other people’s emotional experiences.

Empathy is a prowess of human behavior and has been considered a natural ability. A study, however, found that empathy levels have been declining over the past 30 years.

The research, led by Sara H. Konrath of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and published in August in Personality and Social Psychology Review, found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with drop in the past 10 years. During the same period students’ self-reported self-obsession has reached a new height, according to research by Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University.

An individual’s empathy can be assessed in many ways, but the most popular is simply asking people what they think of themselves.

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a well-known questionnaire, taps empathy with statements such as:

a. “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me” and

b. “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision.”

People vary greatly on the ideal of how empathic they consider themselves. Researcher confirms when someone are acting empathically, they are actually demonstrating their empathy in a visible ways, ranging from mimicking others’ postures to helping people in need (for example, offering to take notes for a sick fellow student).

Ever since the inceptions of Interpersonal Reactivity Index in 1979, thousands of students had solicited their views on their empathetic behavior. Konrath and her colleagues took advantages of data by collating self-reported empathy scores of nearly 14,000 students. Then using a technique known as cross-temporal meta-analysis to measure whether scores have changed over the years.

The results were startling: almost 75 percent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.

What’s to Blame?

This information seems to conflict with studies suggesting that empathy is a trait people are born with. A 2007 study by Yale University developmental psychologists found that six-month-old infants demonstrate an association for empathic behavior, preferring simple dolls they have seen helping others over visually similar bullies. At the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have shown that without persuasions and incentives, toddlers help and share rewards with others. Empathic behavior is not confined to humans or even to primates. In a recent study mice reacted more strongly to painful stimuli when they saw another mouse suffering, suggesting that they “share” the pain of their cage mates.

However new finding found that empathy is on the decline indicating that even when human trait is ingrained, social connections can exert a profound effect, changing even our most basic emotional responses. Precisely what is eroding young people of their natural impulse to feel for others remains mysterious, however, because scientists cannot design a study to evaluate changes that occurred in the past. As Twenge puts it, “you can’t randomly assign people to a generation.” There are various theories.

a. Social Isolations

Konrath cites with increase in social isolation, coincided with the drop in empathy. In the past 30 years Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups—ranging from PTAs to political parties to casual sports teams. This type of isolation can take a toll on people’s attitudes toward others. Steve Duck of the University of Iowa has found that socially isolated, as compared with integrated, individuals evaluate others less generously after interacting with them, and Kenneth J. Rotenberg of Keele University in England has shown that lonely people are more likely to take advantage of others’ trust to cheat them in laboratory games.

b. Information

The types of information we consume have also shifted in recent decades; specifically, Americans have abandoned reading. The number of adults who read literature for pleasure sank below 50 percent for the first time ever in the past 10 years, with the decrease occurring most sharply among college-age adults. And reading may be linked to empathy. In a study published by psychologist Raymond A. Mar of York University in Toronto and others demonstrated that the number of stories preschoolers read predicts their ability to understand the emotions of others. Mar has also shown that adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic.

c. Social Status

Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them.

This behavior suggested, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less, have an impact on the sphere of interpersonal interactions and may aggravate the soaring inequality.

In a recent research, shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little of such power. It has been observed, for instance, a mere five-minute get-acquainted session with strangers, the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker.

Of course, in any society, social power is relative; any of us may be higher or lower in a given interaction, and the research shows the effect still prevails. Though the more powerful pay less attention to us than we do to them, in other situations we are relatively higher on the totem pole of status — and we, too, tend to pay less attention to those a rung or two down.

d. Sufferings

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain. In 2008, social psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Berkeley, studied pairs of strangers telling one another about difficulties they had been through, like a divorce or death of a loved one. The researchers found that the different expression in the playing down of suffering. The more powerful were less compassionate toward the hardships described by the less powerful.

e. Politics

In politics, it is readily notions that politicians have the notions of dismissing inconvenient people to the extent of dismissing the inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some politician on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of care, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem partly from the empathy gap. As political scientists have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize with them.

f. Prejudice

Freud called this “the narcissism of minor differences,” a theme repeated by Vamik D. Volkan, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who was born in Cyprus to Turkish parents. As a small boy, Dr. Volkan remembers hearing negatively about the hated Greek Cypriots — is actually share many similarities with Turkish Cypriots. Yet for decades their modest-size island has been politically divided, which magnify the problem by letting prejudicial myths flourish.

g. Valuable

Mr. Keltner suggests that, in general, we only focus the most on those we value most. While the wealthy can hire help, those with few material assets are more likely to value their social assets: like the neighbor who will keep an eye on your child from the time she gets home from school until the time you get home from work. The financial difference ends up creating a behavioral difference. Poor people are better attuned to interpersonal relations — with those of the same strata, and the more powerful — than the rich are, because they have to be.

While Mr. Keltner’s research finds that the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in all directions, in general, those with the most power in society seem to pay particularly little attention to those with the least power. To be sure, high-status people do attend to those of equal rank — but not as well as those low of status do.

h. Interpersonal Contact

In contrast, extensive interpersonal contact counteracts any biases by letting people from hostile groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends. Thomas F. Pettigrew, a research professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, analyzed more than 500 studies on intergroup contact.

In his research, he found that even in areas where ethnic groups conflict and viewed negatively, individuals who had close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice. They seemed to realize the many ways those demonized “others” were “just like me.” Whether such friendly social contact would overcome the divide between those with more and less social and economic power was not studied, but I suspect it would help.

Whereas the sources of empathic decline are impossible to pinpoint, the work of Konrath and Twenge demonstrates that the American personality is shifting in an ominous direction. Still, we are not doomed to become a society of self-obsessed loners. Konrath points out that if life choices can drive empathy down, then making different choices could nurture it. “The fact that empathy is declining means that there’s more fluidity to it than previously thought,” she says. “It means that empathy can change. It can go up.”

Responsibility Deficit Disorder?

According to Dr. Sapadin, a psychologist, author and success coach. Some people are simply irresponsible.

a. They may be careless and unpredictable or outright reckless.

b. They “forget” about appointments.

c. They’re chronically late.

d. They neglect to plan ahead.

e. They’re financially irresponsible.

f. They don’t take care of their stuff.

g. They make rash decisions that get them into trouble.

h. They ignore deadlines.

i. They act as though others should bail them out of whatever trouble they get into.

This people are not all adolescents but human adults. It could be a friend, a family member or a colleague. We may love them yet we experiencing them can be terribly frustrating. We want to shake them. Yell at them. Knock some sense into their brains. But none of this seems to make a difference to them. They shrug it all off.

Why? Because they have Responsibility Deficit Disorder (RDD), a much-needed diagnostic category that I have just created.

RDD is prevalent in our society and is a growing problem. Those who have it do not “suffer” from it. Quite the contrary. The people who “suffer” are those loved ones who must deal with the rat’s nest that is so often dropped in their laps.

Responsibility is a Choice

More Responsible	Less Responsible
Facts, realism, reality, and learning what is. Inquiring, investigating, seeking, and embracing facts and truth. Reason and sanity.	Fantasy. Avoiding reality; embracing fantasy or magical thinking. Denying or escaping reality. Rumors. Rejecting facts. Insanity.
Honesty.	Dishonesty.
Focusing our thoughts and attention. Orderly.	Drifting, rambling, unfocused, flighty, and chaotic.
Thinking through alternatives and consequences.	Relying on habit or taking the easy way.
Clear and consistent thinking and expression.	Obscurity, vagueness, hedging, inconsistency, waffling.
Learn from history.	Revise, ignore, or dispute history.
Seeking out expertise.	Dismissing expertise.
Working to understand.	Whatever.
Self-discipline. Impulse control. Behaving true to your values. Saying “yes” to your values and “no” to the rest.	Acting on impulse. Going along with whatever. Situational ethics.
Do what you say.	Do whatever.
Fulfill reciprocal obligations.	Evade reciprocal obligations. Cheat.
Open to new ideas and information. Curious. Wise.	Closed to new ideas. Stubborn and closed minded. Ignorant.
Willing to accept blame for errors.	Infallible, arrogant, dismissive, obstinate.
Consistent, congruent, and reliable.	Inconsistent, chaotic, unreliable.
Rationality, valuing reason, respect for facts, and valid logic. Gathering, validating, and studying evidence. Developing and applying a coherent theory of knowledge.	Fallacies, distortions, assumptions, misinformation, and unrepresentative data.
Considering a variety of points-of-view.	Accepting a one-sided view.
Rigorous, careful, attentive.	Sloppy, careless, distracted.
Adaptation and flexibility. Adjusting beliefs and actions to accommodate newly understood facts.	Rigid and misfit.
Competence.	Manipulation.
Autonomy.	Dependence.
Courage.	Cowardice.
Seeking solutions.	Assigning blame.
Integrity.	Betrayal.
Awareness and wisdom.	Unawareness and ignorance.
Adherence to evidence, values, and choice.	Blind obedience.
Entrepreneurship.	Bureaucracy
Participant.	Bystander.
Entitled to my own opinion.	Entitled to my own facts.
Talking to people.	Talking about people.
Building enduring relationships based on who we are.	Seeking instrumental relationships based on what we do.
I choose to . . . I decided to . . .	I had to . . . I had no choice . . .
Ideas, choices, and actions do matter and do have consequences. Believing that effects and outcomes have causes.	It's all up to fate, destiny, and chance. Attributing results to chance or destiny. There is nothing I can do; I am helpless.
Internal Locus of Control	External Locus of Control.

Combating Care less

If all this sounds familiar to you, here’s what you must do to save your own sanity.

Control impulses and act deliberately according to their values, well-chosen beliefs, and long term goals,
Consider the needs of others and the community, not only themselves,
Are generous rather than selfish, kind rather than cruel, gratified, not greedy,
Are comfortable with complexity, doubt, and ambiguity, they are not quick to judge,
Control their emotions and don't tolerate tantrums, anger displays, self-indulgence, and violence,
Are emotionally competent and apply a robust theory of knowledge,
Integrate experiences and information to act rationally, consistently, and reliably rather than unpredictably, inconsistently, irrationally, and erratically. Adults are stable, even tempered, and non-volatile.
Are patient and consider the long term, not only this fleeting moment,
Speak with candor and don't tell lies, speak disingenuously, or mislead,
Are trustworthy, not manipulative; respect others and play by a fair set of rules. Children often cheat and expect to win at any cost.
Choose wisdom over ignorance,
Value reason over power, the pen over the sword,
Confront problems and transcend conflict, rather than deny and avoid problems, instigate quarrels, become vindictive, or seek revenge,
Accept responsibility for their actions, admit mistakes, accept their share of the blame, and apologize to others,
Accept and assimilate facts, rather than dismiss, distort, ignore, spin, self-justify, or fantasize,
Maintain a balanced perspective; adults tolerate trivial transgressions while courageously upholding the most vital principles,
Attain an authentic humility and keep their egos in check.
Are authentic, not phony,
Are autonomous, competent, and value their interdependence with others,
Are helpful, not helpless.
Are sober, not strung-out,
Enjoy fun, but never at the expense of others.

Our world requires adult supervision; take responsibility to act your age. Children choose easy over hard, simplistic over complex, and fast over slow. But significant contributions are often difficult, complex, and slow to achieve. Forego the cheap thrills to achieve satisfaction and significance. You are a competent, autonomous adult. You are fully responsible for all your words and actions, as are other competent adults; it is time to put away childish things.