Empathy means the psychological ability to to feel what another person would feel, if they were in the same situation experienced by them. It is trying to understand feelings and emotions, trying to experience what another individual feels.
Empathy drives people to help each other. It is closely linked to altruism - love and concern for others - and the ability to help.
Empathy also helps to better understand the behavior of others in certain circumstances and how another person makes decisions.
One example of empathy it would be the case of racism, for example. When you see or know that a person has suffered an episode of racism, you can empathize with the other, understand what he felt when he suffered from the episode.
Even if the case of racism is not directly with you, the feeling of putting yourself in the other's shoes and accepting the pain suffered by them says about empathy. Therefore, the antonym of empathy it would be indifference to what the other suffers.
Originating from the Greek term
empatheia, which meant "passion", empathy presupposes an affective communication with another person and is one of the foundations of the identification and psychological understanding of other individuals.What is an empathetic person?
Being empathetic is identifying with another person or with the situation they are experiencing. It is knowing how to listen to others and making an effort to understand their problems, difficulties and emotions.
When someone says “there was an immediate empathy between us”, it means that there was a great deal of involvement, an instant identification.
Contact with the other person created pleasure, joy, satisfaction and compatibility. In this context, empathy can be considered the opposite of antipathy.
To be empathetic, it is necessary to be able to overcome the barriers of selfishness, prejudice or fear of what is unknown or different.
Empathy in relationships
Empathy can occur in all types of human relationships: in family relationships, in friendships, in the work environment and even with strangers.
In personal relationships, empathy can be fundamental for understanding the difficulties of people with whom one lives, helping to reduce and avoid conflicts.
The same can happen in the work environment, as empathy can help a colleague understand the difficulties faced by another.
Empathy between people who do not know each other is the most difficult to occur, as it is characterized by a feeling of understanding with a person with whom there is no bond of affection.
However, it is important to know that empathy it's a feeling that can be practiced. One of the ways to exercise empathy is to train to keep an affectionate eye on other people's needs.
Check which ones qualities of a person.
empathy in psychology
For psychology, empathy is a person's ability to understand and feel what a person is going through or has gone through.
For psychology, according to American psychologists Paul Ekman and Daniel Goleman, there are three types of empathy:
- Emotional empathy: it's the one where we can feel and share what the other feels, it's when we put ourselves in the other's shoes and the way they feel in their conditions.
- cognitive empathy: is characterized by communicating better, and understanding the other's thoughts and reason for these thoughts and even feelings.
- compassionate empathy: it is the type of empathy that goes beyond feeling or accepting the other's thoughts, it makes the empathetic person help the other effectively.
Difference between empathy and sympathy
Sympathy is usually an intellectual response, while empathy is an emotional fusion.
While sympathy indicates a desire to be in the presence of another person and to please them, empathy gives rise to a desire to understand and get to know another person.
Sympathy, for example, usually unites people through affinities, that is, what they have in common. Empathy, on the other hand, does not necessarily happen by affinity, as it occurs through a process of understanding the situation experienced by the other person.
See too:
- Qualities of a person
- Sympathy
- Resilience