What quality does a person lack who cannot understand another's point of view?

I am looking for a non-slang, non-colloquial word - a word that I can use when speaking to a professional therapist/counselor, to be exact.

Another way to ask this question might be "What quality does a solipsist (or maybe an egocentrist) lack?"

As an example, a young child steals a bicycle from another child. The child's parent asks the child why he stole it and the child replies "because I like it." The parent asks the child "Who else liked it besides you," and the child can't come up with an answer. What quality does this child lack?

This applies to many adults, but it's easier to recognize in a child.

At first I thought of "empathy," and that is correct at an emotional level. But I'm particularly interested in this at a rational level - an inability to understand another's thought process, available data, cultural influences, etc. and understand why a particular conclusion, decision, or action seemed right to him or her. So, the intellectual or rational equivalent of empathy (or possibly compassion) might work here as well.

Finally, I do not mean the inability to agree with or support others' viewpoints, only an inability to understand why they understand things as they do. This may sound like a lack of adequate analytical skills, but I know people like this who are otherwise quite capable of analysis and reason.

I am most interested in what quality such an individual lacks, but I secondarily welcome descriptive words for the individual other than "egocentrist" and "solipsist."

Solution 1:

My preference would be empathy. But if you want to emphasize that it is a failure of reasoning or perception, rather than an emotional lack, I'd suggest 'insight'.

insight

noun

2. penetrating mental vision or discernment; faculty of seeing into inner character or underlying truth.

Solution 2:

In child development psychology, the ability to conceive of an alternate point of view is called decentering (definition 2, though in this reference slightly refactored to a literary meaning) and is considered one of the major steps in cognitive development.

This is sometimes converted into a noun as decentration.

Solution 3:

I'd call such a person inconsiderate/thoughtless.

not giving enough thought to other people’s feelings or needs

The quality they lack would be consideration/thoughtfulness.

the quality of being sensitive towards others and thinking about their wishes and feelings

Notice the definition talks about thinking/giving thought to rather than feeling/empathize with, as per your requirement.

For example, inconsiderate passengers, or inconsiderate parkers, might be 'otherwise quite capable of analysis and reason'. But they temporarily block it out when it suits them. It's as if they simply don't get that their actions might cause inconvenience to others

I'm sure their are fancier and/or more technical words out there, but this is as close as I can get.

Solution 4:

Consider inner-directed and other-directed. As described by sociologist David Reisman, these archetypal personalities are characterized as follows:

Inner-directed people tended to be more rigid and confident; they embodied certain Protestant ethic values and were motivated by individual aspiration and ambitions. The other-directed personality type aspired to be loved rather than esteemed. They wanted to feel in harmony with the opinions around them.

....

The inner-directed person orients herself by an internal “gyroscope,” while the other-directed person orients herself by “radar.”

from a discussion of Reisman's The Lonely Crowd at University-Discoveries.com

Solution 5:

The notions of subjectivity, subjective impressions, and subjective idealism are used to describe several of the varieties of solipsists mentioned in this Wikipedia entry about solipsism, which leads me to conclude that objectivity is perhaps a trait/quality that solipsists lack (vocabulary[dot]com).