Empathy

Empathy is the recognition and understanding of the states of mind, including beliefs, desires and particularly emotions of others without injecting your own. This concept is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or experiencing for oneself the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. In this sense it might be described as a sort of emotional resonance.

Related Topics:
Beliefs - Desire - Emotion - Resonance

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However, this metaphor is ambiguous concerning whether one imagines actually "being" the other person, with all their beliefs and character traits, or simply being in their situation (such as being the prime minister).

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One must be careful not to confuse empathy with sympathy, which is a distinct social emotion characterized by a general pro-attitude of "feeling sorry" in the moment for another person and which often motivates responses which attempt to make another feel better or the internal wish that they will become happier; sympathy can affect empathy. Empathy is also not the same as emotional contagion, the manner in which one person's emotions are guided by the perceived emotions of others, especially visible within mob psychology or with children.

Related Topics:
Sympathy - Emotional contagion - Mob psychology - Children

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