Empathy is one's ability to recognize and understand the emotion of another. As the states of mind, beliefs, and desires of others are intertwined with their emotions, one with empathy for another may often be able to more effectively divine another's modes of thought and mood. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or experiencing the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort of emotional resonance.
Definitions of Empathy
Theodore Lipps: Einfühlung ("feeling into")
Edith Stein: “Empathy… is the experience of foreign consciousness in general.”
Heinz Kohut: “Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person.”.
C. D. Batson: “Other-oriented feelings congruent with the perceived welfare of another person.”
Nancy Eisenberg: “An affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition, and that is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel.”
Martin Hoffman: “An affective response more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own.”
Roy Schafer: “Empathy involves the inner experience of sharing in and comprehending the mometary psychological state of another person.”
D. M. Berger: “The capacity to know emotionally what another is experiencing from within the frame of reference of that other person, the capacity to sample the feelings of another or to put oneself in another’s shoes.”
R. R. Greenson: “To empathize means to share, to experience the feelings of another person.”
Carl Rogers: “To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth."
Discussion
While the ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process that only fully develops with time, as later on in life, or with considerable training, or investigation, or imagination, the roots of such ability are probably innate to the empathizer's life, training, or investigation.
Human capacity to recognize the emotions of another is related to one's imitative capacities, and seems to be grounded in one's innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of one's corresponding movements or expressions. See #Organic basis.
Humans also seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice, and body language of another and one's inner feeling. Hence, by looking at the facial expressions or bodily movements of another, or by hearing another's tone of voice, one may be able to get an immediate sense of how another seems to feel on the inside. One experiences this as anything in a range, from understanding, to directly experiencing, or to feeling another's emotion (say, sadness or anger), rather than just noting the behavioral symptoms of another's emotion. But clinicians must take care not to over-invest their own emotions at the risk of draining away their own resourcefulness; thus awareness of one's own limitations is prudent in a clinical situation, as in caregiving.
More fully developed empathy requires more than simply recognizing another's emotional state. Since emotions are typically directed towards objects or states of affairs (either real or imaginary), the empathiser first requires some idea of what that object might be.
Next, the empathiser must determine how the emotional feeling will significantly affect the way in which he perceives the other person. The empathizer needs to determine the aspects of the person upon which to focus.
Hence he must not only recognize the person toward which the other is directed, but also then recognize the bodily feeling, and then add these components together. The empathiser needs next to find the way into the loop where perception of the other person generates feeling. That feeling affects the perception of the other person. This process occurs before taking in account the character of the other person as well as their wider non-psychological context (such as being short or being a lawyer).
Methods for Simulating Empathy
When seeking to communicate with another, it may be helpful to demonstrate empathy with the other, to open-up the channel of communication with the other. In this case two methods of simulating empathy are possible:
a) either simulate the pretend beliefs, desires, character traits and context of the other and see what emotional feelings this leads to;
b) or simulate the emotional feeling directly perceived and then look around for a suitable reason for this to fit. Either way, full empathetic engagement is supposed to help to understand and anticipate the behavior of the other.
Empathy may be painful to oneself: seeing the pain of others, especially as broadcasted by mass media, can cause one temporary or permanent clinical depression; a phenomenon which is sometimes called weltschmerz.
Contrasting Empathy to other Phenomena
One must be careful not to confuse empathy with either sympathy, emotional contagion or mind reading. Sympathy is the feeling of compassion for another, the wish to see them better or happier, often described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially a child or a person in a mob) identifies with strong emotions others are showing and becomes subject to the same emotions themselves. Mind reading is a controversial paranormal phenomenon, which differs in that empathy is based (so far as is presently known) not upon the paranormal but upon sophisticated processing of what is seen and heard in the usual way.
Psychological Perspectives
Some experts (psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientists) believe that not all humans have an ability to feel empathy or perceive the emotions of others. For instance, Autism and related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome are often (but not always) characterized by an apparent reduced ability to empathize with others. The interaction between empathy and autism spectrum disorders is a complex and ongoing field of research, and is discussed in detail below.
According to Simon Baron-Cohen's ideas, this absence might be related to an absence of theory of mind (i.e., the ability to model another's world view using either a theory-like analogy between oneself and others, or the ability to simulate pretend mental states and then apply the consequences of these simulations to others). Again, not all autistics fit this pattern, and the theory remains controversial.
In contrast, psychopaths are seemingly able to demonstrate the appearance of sensing the emotions of others with such a theory of mind, often demonstrating care and friendship in a convincing manner, and can use this ability to charm or manipulate, but they crucially lack the sympathy or compassion that empathy often leads to. Empathy certainly does not guarantee benevolence. The same ability may underlie schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the pain of another entity) and sadism (being sexually gratified through the infliction of pain or humiliation on another person).
Moreover, some research suggests that people are more able and willing to empathize with those most similar to themselves. In particular, empathy increases with similarities in culture and living conditions. We are also more likely to empathize with those with which we interact more frequently.
Even more, people can empathize with animals. As such, empathy is thought to be a driving psychological force behind the animal rights movement (an example of sympathy), whether or not using empathy is justified by any real similarity between the emotional experiences of animals and humans.
Development of Empathy
By the age of 2, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person. Sometimes, toddlers will comfort others or show concern for them as early as 24 months of age. Also during the second year, toddlers will play games of falsehood or "pretend" in an effort to fool others, and this requires that the child know what others believe before he or she can manipulate those beliefs (Feldman, 1997).
Other Aspects
In addition to the above use, the term empathy is also used by some people to signify their heightened or higher sensitivity to the emotions and state of others. This, reportedly, can lead to both positive aspects such as a more skilled instinct for what is "behind the scenes" with people, but also to difficulties such as rapid over-stimulation, overwhelm or stress caused by an inability to protect oneself from this so-called 'pick-up'. Such people may for example find crowds stressful simply due to picking up what is often described as "white noise" or multiple emotions as they pass through it, a phenomenon not to be confused with agoraphobia and sometimes informally known as crowd-sickness.
