Empathy

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Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience.^[1][2][3] There are more (sometimes conflicting) definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others.^[2][3][4] Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.^[2][3]

Empathy is still a topic of research. The major areas of research include the development of empathy, the genetics and neuroscience of empathy, cross-species empathy, and the impairment of empathy. Some researchers have made efforts to quantify empathy through different methods, such as from questionnaires where participants can fill out and then be scored on their answers.

The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions in others may be innate^[5] and may be achieved unconsciously. Empathy is not all-or-nothing; rather, a person can be more or less empathic toward another and empirical research supports a variety of interventions that are able to improve empathy.^[6]

The English word empathy is derived from the Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empatheia, meaning "physical affection or passion").^[7] That word derives from ἐν (en, "in, at") and πάθος (pathos, "passion" or "suffering").^[8] Theodor Lipps adapted the German aesthetic term Einfühlung ("feeling into") to psychology in 1903,^{[9]: ch. 1} and Edward B. Titchener translated Einfühlung into English as "empathy" in 1909.^[10] In modern Greek εμπάθεια may mean, depending on context, prejudice, malevolence, malice, or hatred.^[11]