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Are you empathetic?

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Did you know?

Sympathy and empathy both refer to a caring response to the emotional state of another person, but a distinction between them is typically made: while sympathy is a feeling of sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult or painful, empathy involves actively sharing in the emotional experience of the other person.

Sympathy has been in use since the 16th century, and its greater age is reflected in its wider breadth of meanings, including "a feeling of loyalty" and "unity or harmony in action or effect." It comes ultimately from the Greek sympathēs, meaning "having common feelings, sympathetic," which was formed from syn- ("with, together with") and páthos, "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition." Empathy was modeled on sympathy; it was coined in the early 20th century as a translation of the German Einfühlung ("feeling-in" or "feeling into"). First applied in contexts of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology, empathy continues to have technical use in those fields that sympathy does not.

Did you know?

Compassion and empathy both refer to a caring response to someone else's distress. While empathy refers to an active sharing in the emotional experience of the other person, compassion adds to that emotional experience a desire to alleviate the person's distress.

... the story of Nellie Bly, the first female investigative reporter, who not only demanded justice from powerful institutions, but also insisted on dignity and compassion for the most vulnerable citizens. - The Christian Science Monitor, 17 Aug. 2022

Blonde clearly wants us to feel for Norma Jeane, but it dwells on her pain so obsessively ... that the movie's empathy feels like another form of exploitation. - Justin Chang, NPR, 23 Sept. 2022

The distinction between compassion and empathy is frequently a topic of exploration.

By empathy I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you're in pain and I feel your pain-I am feeling empathy toward you. If you're being anxious, I pick up your anxiety. If you're sad and I pick up your sadness, I'm being empathetic. And that's different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it. I care about you, but I don't necessarily pick up your feelings. ... [I]f I feel compassion for you, I'll be invigorated. I'll be happy and I'll try to make your life better. - Paul Bloom, quoted in Vox, 16 Jan. 2019

Compassion is a much older word; it's been part of the language since the 14th century, and comes ultimately from Latin com- and pati, meaning "to bear, suffer." Empathy is a 20th century coinage modeled on sympathy as a translation of the German Einfühlung ("feeling-in" or "feeling into"). It was first applied in contexts of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology and continues to have technical use in those fields.

Example Sentences

He felt great His months spent researching prison life gave him greater empathy with the poor. empathy towards convicts.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'empathy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Word History

Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion - more at pathos

1909, in the meaning defined at sense 2

The first known use of empathy was in 1909

Dictionary Entries Near empathy

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Merriam-Webster unabridged

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the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit... See the full definition

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a teller of stories: such as; a relater of anecdotes; a reciter of tales (as in a children's library)... See the full definition

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con·​nec·​tion | \ kə-ˈnek-shən \

a : causal or logical relation or sequence the connection between two ideas

b(1) : contextual relation or association In this connection the word has a different meaning.

(2) : relationship in fact wanted in connection with a robbery

c : a relation of personal intimacy (as of family ties) Family connections can make getting a job much easier.

d : coherence, continuity … a confused multitude without order or connection.— John Locke

2 a : something that connects : link a loose connection in the wiring

b : a means of communication or transport a telephone connection

3 : a person connected with another especially by marriage, kinship, or common interest has powerful connections

4 : a political, social, professional, or commercial relationship The school has no connection with the museum. : such as

b : an arrangement to execute orders or advance interests of another a firm's foreign connections

c : a source of contraband (such as illegal drugs)

5 : a set of persons associated together: such as

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the act of connecting : the state of being connected: such as; causal or logical relation or sequence; contextual relation or association... See the full definition

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Love Connection

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cancer connection

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Women's March, I will never forget my first march!!!

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Women's March, I will never forget my first march!!!

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I will also never forget my first Pride Parade 

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I will also never forget my first Pride Parade 

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Johnny is five years old. He watches his friend Mark being teased by other kids, and then he sees Mark start to cry. As a parent, or caregiver, what do you hope Johnny will do?

For many adults, the expected response would be that Johnny would show empathy. That is, he would be understanding and sensitive to Mark's feelings, and show a compassionate response to Mark's distress. But is it realistic to expect that young children have this capacity?

Signs of empathic concern in children have been documented as young as eight to 10 months of age. Demonstrations of more obvious forms of empathy, such as showing concern when someone is crying, can be seen in toddlers. But like all aspects of development, the quantity and quality of this skill development can vary dramatically from one child to the next.

We do know that when children learn to be empathic early in their development, it can lead to much stronger empathy skills later in life as they become adults who treat others with kindness, respect and understanding. Empathic children can become empathic parents, spouses, co-workers and friends.

Empathy is not a fixed trait; it can be fostered. It can be encouraged and cultivated by empathic siblings, as well as adult caregivers. But empathy does take time to develop.

Parents, teachers and caregivers often ask how they can encourage young children to be more empathic. Here are some tips:

1. Model how to value feelings

First, whenever possible, show warmth and empathy towards children.

Children are watching others to learn appropriate ways of behaving and interacting, and are known to be influenced by the behaviours they see around them. You can be a good role model by acknowledging and valuing others' feelings, and showing understanding and sympathy when someone is sad, upset, distressed, frustrated or in need of help.

(Unsplash/bruno nascimento), CC BY

When children show negative emotions, acknowledge how they feel. Provide nurturing until they signal they are OK to move onto something else.

Young children sometimes need help understanding what they are feeling, so label the emotion for them. For example, if they are crying, say: "You seem upset. How can I help?"

2. Connect feelings, thoughts and behaviours

Second, when talking about feelings, connect behaviours with the feelings for children so that they understand cause and effect.

For example: "Max is feeling sad because Oliver took his toy. What might help Max feel better?"

(Shutterstock)

Teaching kids about cause and effect can also be done through stories, play-acting or reading books. Talk to children about the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of the characters. What might the characters do next?

Connect these scenarios with the child's own experiences. For example, if the character is sad because she misses her parents, connect that feeling to a time the child also expressed sadness for something similar. This helps the child more clearly understand the connection between feelings, thoughts and behaviours.

For older children (aged five and up), ask them to step into the mind, or take the perspective, of another child or adult: "How do you think they are feeling? Why might they be upset? What could we do to help?"

3. Build a 'climate' of empathy

Third, as a family, or as a classroom, put a focus on working together to build a "climate" that encourages children to be empathic and understanding with their family and friends.

(Shutterstock)

If your child, or a child in your classroom, is struggling with empathy, try to set them up for success by creating opportunities to be empathic and highlight for them how being kind can benefit everyone involved:

"That was very kind of you to help your sister when she lost her favourite toy. I bet she'll remember that and want to help you when you need it!"

This will foster more of the same types of behaviour in the future.

Strong empathy skills can set children up for success in life. Parents, teachers, caregivers and even siblings can play a powerful role in helping one another achieve this success.

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Three strategies to promote empathy in children

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Johnny is five years old. He watches his friend Mark being teased by other kids, and then he sees Mark start to cry. As a parent, or caregiver, what do you hope Johnny will do? For many adults, the expected response would be that Johnny would show empathy.

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This is the introductory essay in our series on understanding others' feelings. In it we will examine empathy, including what it is, whether our doctors need more of it, and when too much may not be a good thing.
Empathy is the ability to share and understand the emotions of others. It is a construct of multiple components, each of which is associated with its own brain network. There are three ways of looking at empathy.

First there is affective empathy. This is the ability to share the emotions of others. People who score high on affective empathy are those who, for example, show a strong visceral reaction when watching a scary movie.

They feel scared or feel others' pain strongly within themselves when seeing others scared or in pain.

Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand the emotions of others. A good example is the psychologist who understands the emotions of the client in a rational way, but does not necessarily share the emotions of the client in a visceral sense.

Finally, there's emotional regulation. This refers to the ability to regulate one's emotions. For example, surgeons need to control their emotions when operating on a patient.

Another way to understand empathy is to distinguish it from other related constructs. For example, empathy involves self-awareness, as well as distinction between the self and the other. In that sense it is different from mimicry, or imitation.

Many animals might show signs of mimicry or emotional contagion to another animal in pain. But without some level of self-awareness, and distinction between the self and the other, it is not empathy in a strict sense. Empathy is also different from sympathy, which involves feeling concern for the suffering of another person and a desire to help.

That said, empathy is not a unique human experience. It has been observed in many non-human primates and even rats.

People often say psychopaths lack empathy but this is not always the case. In fact, psychopathy is enabled by good cognitive empathic abilities - you need to understand what your victim is feeling when you are torturing them. What psychopaths typically lack is sympathy. They know the other person is suffering but they just don't care.

Research has also shown those with psychopathic traits are often very good at regulating their emotions.

Why do we need it?

Empathy is important because it helps us understand how others are feeling so we can respond appropriately to the situation. It is typically associated with social behaviour and there is lots of research showing that greater empathy leads to more helping behaviour.

However, this is not always the case. Empathy can also inhibit social actions, or even lead to amoral behaviour. For example, someone who sees a car accident and is overwhelmed by emotions witnessing the victim in severe pain might be less likely to help that person.

Similarly, strong empathetic feelings for members of our own family or our own social or racial group might lead to hate or aggression towards those we perceive as a threat. Think about a mother or father protecting their baby or a nationalist protecting their country.

People who are good at reading others' emotions, such as manipulators, fortune-tellers or psychics, might also use their excellent empathetic skills for their own benefit by deceiving others.

Jesse Orrico/Unsplash

Interestingly, people with higher psychopathic traits typically show more utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas such as the footbridge problem. In this thought experiment, people have to decide whether to push a person off a bridge to stop a train about to kill five others laying on the track.

The psychopath would more often than not choose to push the person off the bridge. This is following the utilitarian philosophy that holds saving the life of five people by killing one person is a good thing. So one could argue those with psychopathic tendencies are more moral than normal people - who probably wouldn't push the person off the bridge - as they are less influenced by emotions when making moral decisions.

How is empathy measured?

Empathy is often measured with self-report questionnaires such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) or Questionnaire for Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE).

These typically ask people to indicate how much they agree with statements that measure different types of empathy.

The QCAE, for instance, has statements such as, "It affects me very much when one of my friends is upset", which is a measure of affective empathy.

Cognitive empathy is determined by the QCAE by putting value on a statement such as, "I try to look at everybody's side of a disagreement before I make a decision."

Using the QCAE, we recently found people who score higher on affective empathy have more grey matter, which is a collection of different types of nerve cells, in an area of the brain called the anterior insula.

This area is often involved in regulating positive and negative emotions by integrating environmental stimulants - such as seeing a car accident - with visceral and automatic bodily sensations.

We also found people who score higher on cognitive empathy had more grey matter in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

This area is typically activated during more cognitive processes, such as Theory of Mind, which is the ability to attribute mental beliefs to yourself and another person. It also involves understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives different from one's own.

Can empathy be selective?

Research shows we typically feel more empathy for members of our own group, such as those from our ethnic group. For example, one study scanned the brains of Chinese and Caucasian participants while they watched videos of members of their own ethnic group in pain. They also observed people from a different ethnic group in pain.

The researchers found that a brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is often active when we see others in pain, was less active when participants saw members of ethnic groups different from their own in pain.

Other studies have found brain areas involved in empathy are less active when watching people in pain who act unfairly. We even see activation in brain areas involved in subjective pleasure, such as the ventral striatum, when watching a rival sport team fail.

Yet, we do not always feel less empathy for those who aren't members of our own group. In our recent study, students had to give monetary rewards or painful electrical shocks to students from the same or a different university. We scanned their brain responses when this happened.

Brain areas involved in rewarding others were more active when people rewarded members of their own group, but areas involved in harming others were equally active for both groups.

These results correspond to observations in daily life. We generally feel happier if our own group members win something, but we're unlikely to harm others just because they belong to a different group, culture or race. In general, ingroup bias is more about ingroup love rather than outgroup hate.

Yet in some situations, it could be helpful to feel less empathy for a particular group of people. For example, in war it might be beneficial to feel less empathy for people you are trying to kill, especially if they are also trying to harm you.

To investigate, we conducted another brain imaging study. We asked people to watch videos from a violent video game in which a person was shooting innocent civilians (unjustified violence) or enemy soldiers (justified violence).

While watching the videos, people had to pretend they were killing real people. We found the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, typically active when people harm others, was active when people shot innocent civilians. The more guilt participants felt about shooting civilians, the greater the response in this region.

However, the same area was not activated when people shot the soldier that was trying to kill them.

The results provide insight into how people regulate their emotions. They also show the brain mechanisms typically implicated when harming others become less active when the violence against a particular group is seen as justified.

This might provide future insights into how people become desensitised to violence or why some people feel more or less guilty about harming others.

Our empathetic brain has evolved to be highly adaptive to different types of situations. Having empathy is very useful as it often helps to understand others so we can help or deceive them, but sometimes we need to be able to switch off our empathetic feelings to protect our own lives, and those of others.
Tomorrow's article will look at whether art can cultivate empathy.

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Understanding others' feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?

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This is the introductory essay in our series on understanding others' feelings. In it we will examine empathy, including what it is, whether our doctors need more of it, and when too much may not be a good thing. Empathy is the ability to share and understand the emotions of others.

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tells a true story of a man who went to prison.

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Empathy. It's a quality that is much needed in society and in the workplace. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as the "ability to understand and share the feelings of another."

But a recent State of the Workplace Empathy study 2018 by Businessolver found that there is a big disconnect between how employees view their chief executive (CEO) in terms of empathy and how CEOs view their own organization: 92% of CEOs reported their organization is empathetic but only 50% of employees say their CEO is empathetic.

CEOs are aware of the issue. In 2018, 68% of CEOs say the state of empathy in U.S. organizations needs to change - up 8 percentage points since 2017. But, it seems CEOs aren't sure how to be part of the solution to that change - 45% of CEOs in 2018 reported they had difficulty demonstrating empathy in their day-to-day working life. Ninety-six percent of employees consider it important for their employers to demonstrate empathy - a 4 percent increase since 2017. But, 92% believe empathy remains undervalued, a 7 percentage point rise since last year.

Chief Executive Jon Shanahan of Businessolver says that the disconnect comes from the two groups viewing the behavior of exhibiting empathy in the workplace differently.

It's time to change perceptions and increase our standards for empathy and it's clear that increased workplace diversity makes organizations more empathetic. However, the perception of women in leadership is skewed and distorted, as nearly 50% of men and about 30% of women think women are well-represented in leadership in companies where only one in ten senior leaders is a woman. CEOs are no longer free to sit on the sidelines and delegate workforce culture to their HR tea or other staff they need to be part of the change in conversation if they want to stay ahead of their competitors and equally important, engaged with all employees -both the senior executives and the interns."

Shanahan points out that empathy is like a muscle which needs to be trained to become stronger.

A large percentage of those surveyed in our study showed interest in empathy training. Further, about 80% of employees would be eager to participate in a variety of empathy skills training initiatives, including internal or external workshop, online courses and one-to-one coaching. An even higher percentage of CEOs (90%) expressed the same level of interest."

The study also found that 87% of CEOs see a direct link between workplace empathy and business performance, productivity, retention and general business health. Eighty-seven percent of CEOs believe a company's financial performance is tied to empathy in the workplace, as do 79% of HR professionals. In fact, majorities in all demographics of employees responded that empathy motivates workers and increases productivity. Additionally, each year the State of Workplace Empathy study has found that large percentages of employees would be willing to work longer hours for an empathetic employer, and 2018 is no exception (81%).

Underscoring the increasing value of empathy at work, the report reveals that 96% of respondents rate empathy as important for companies to demonstrate - up 4 percentage points from last year's survey - and CEOs overwhelmingly link their company's financial performance to empathy in the workplace. There is research to support this correlation: an empathy index published in the Harvard Business Review found that the 10 most empathetic companies increased in value more than twice as much as those at the bottom of the index and they generated 50% more earnings defined by market capitalization, from one year to the next. CEOs overwhelmingly link their company's financial performance to empathy in the workplace.

Empathy also has an impact on retention. Ninety percent of employees are more likely to stay with an organization that empathizes with their needs. More than two-thirds of employees in tech, healthcare, and financial services reported they would be willing to make trade-offs on pay if it meant working for a more empathetic employer.

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Empathy. It's a quality that is much needed in society and in the workplace. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as the "ability to understand and share the feelings of another."

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Activities

1. Can you think of a time-maybe during an argument with a friend or when the boy or girl you liked hurt your feelings-when you wished that someone understood how you felt? When we try to relate to what another person is going through, we're being empathetic.

2. Do you think you're an empathetic person? Respond to each statement on Are You Empathetic? with "yes" if it describes something you do or "no" if you don't do what is described.

3. If you answered mostly "yes," you probably do a good job of showing empathy toward other people. The statements you answered "no" to are things you could do to be more empathetic.

4. As a class, use Are You Empathetic? to discuss how you can follow the behaviors suggested to show empathy toward others:

One way you can try to imagine what it feels like being in someone else's shoes is to ask yourself, "How would I feel in this situation?" How else can you try to understand how others feel?

When you listen to others, making eye contact, not interrupting the speaker, and asking follow-up questions can show that you're making a genuine effort to understand what they're going through. What other behaviors might show someone that you are being an empathetic listener?

What can you do to be more attuned to other people's feelings? For instance, when you talk to your friends, how many "you" questions do you ask compared to the number of "I" statements you make?

5. Now you are going to practice what you've learned about being empathetic. Pair up with a classmate. Tell your partner one of the following: an embarrassing moment, a time you were scared or something that made you sad. If you are not comfortable sharing a real-life experience, you may pretend to be a fictional character and tell his/her story (e.g., as Juliet, talk about how scared you were to drink the potion the Friar gave you). Your partner should practice being empathetic as he is listening to your story. Then, switch roles: Practice being empathetic as your partner tells you what he experienced.

6. With your partner, discuss how she showed empathy toward you, how it made you feel and what you wish she had done differently. Use statements like, "I could tell you were really listening to me because you maintained eye contact with me during the entire conversation, and that made me feel like you care."

7. Everyone in the class should now stand. Go around the room, sharing something you learned about practicing empathy, sitting after you share. If someone else shares your thought, sit down. Continue around the room until everyone is sitting.

Extension Activity

Make an effort to practice empathetic listening at home with a guardian or sibling.

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Can you think of a time-maybe during an argument with a friend or when the boy or girl you liked hurt your feelings-when you wished that someone understood how you felt? When we try to relate to what another person is going through, we're being empathetic. Do you think you're an empathetic person?

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The power of empathy: Helen Riess at TEDxMiddlebury

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The clues to a great story | Andrew Stanton | TED

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Why I Don't Fall In Love - Shamir Reuben | The Storytellers

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How to Connect to Anyone | Soraya Morgan Gutman | TEDxWilmingtonWomen

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connected | poem about facebook twitter youtube social media | ms moem | english poet

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The hidden truth about human connection | Dan Foxx | TEDxChelmsford