My DD16 is like this.....she has been since she was about 9 and the divorce has made it worse. After the divorce....it dawned on me after being married to my EX for 15 years that he is the same way and she is just like him. So I don't think you can teach someone to have empathy.

My EX told me after the divorce that he doesn't feel things like normal people....he was always very  nice and kind and patient and a very good husband....but looking back he was just playing a part.....he is now just playing a new part with his new wife living a completely different lifestyle....he's just able to confrom to any situation and be anyone he needs to be....but he does it with ease.....so I do believe he doesn't have real feelings like he said.....he's like a robot and those traits got passed down to one of our kids sadly.

Well, people vary in their capacity for empathy.

I agree with both tog and exjulie - empathy is absolutely taught, but it also varies from person to person. 

Some kids develop empathy almost naturally when they're quite young. Other kids seem to lack it and need to be shown. 

We, as people, are selfish by nature until we learn the "feel good" high we get from giving to/helping others. It's almost selfish, to some degree, to give/help others because most of the time, we do it to feel better ourselves, to feel like good people, etc. I read once that the only reason we do favours is because subconciously, we feel that a favour is owed to us. It's almost a way of protecting ourselves in the future. 

Anyways, we can debate whether giving and helping is selfish or not, but the question is about empathy. Kids definitely need to be taught empathy. My SD wasn't the most empathetic person, but we have continuously worked on it since she was around 2 years old. It's a matter of stopping them when they're not showing empathy and saying "Hey, look, you're being innapropriate right now. You need to think about XYZ and put yourself in their position." each and every time they're not being considerate. 

Kids don't develop the ability to rationalize until closer to 5 or so years old. They can't feel empathetic if they can't rationalize and put themselves in the other person's shoes. This needs to be developed as time goes on. Our brains aren't fully developed until we're, what, 30 or so years old? We need to HELP kids develop their little brains so they know these things that we feel should be there. 

My SD has turned into a very empathetic little girl since it's something we've always, always been firm on. We don't allow her to walk away when someone is hurt or upset. We don't allow her to make insensitive comments. What she does when we're not around, who knows, but I know it's made a difference to some degree. In fact, when I was miscarrying and she was around 4 years old, we had no choice but to bring her to the hospital.

When most 4 year olds would be complaining because we were there for hours upon hours, and they wouldn't understand what was happening, she knew mommy sunshinex was really, really hurting and her only concern was me. She was grabbing me tissues, telling me "we'll have another baby, mommy sunshinex," and overall, showing great compassion. She put my comfort above hers, which I thought was incredible for a 4 year old. 

This has been the number one issue we've had with SD8. There hasn't been any luck with her actually becoming empathetic so far, shes just learned how to say the "correct" thing better to get her way or manipulate people.

My personal thought is that most kids can be taught it, at least to an extent, but theres probably a small percentage that have a difference in their brain structure or whatever else going on that makes it difficult or impossible.