Empathy

Understanding the emotional lives of others

Photo by Ethan Dow on Unsplash

The Origins of Empathy

Empathy comes from the Greek “Em-” and “Pathos” meaning “In-feeling”. It means being aware of, and sharing another person's feelings, experiences and emotions.

In 1908 the term was translated from the German Einfühlung. However, at the time empathy was not about understanding other people, but about projecting our own imagined feelings and experiences into objects.

Empathy was seen as an aesthetic impulse and vital to the enjoyment of art. For example, an observer may perceive a mountain or tall building as if it were rising upwards into the sky because there is a sense of projecting our own inner sense of movement into the abstract lines we see.

Psychologists conducted experiments on aesthetic empathy and discovered that participants perceived lines with sharp angles as angry, and vertical lines as expressing force or uplifting feelings. In 1928, writer Rebecca West depicted her own joyful feeling of soaring with birds in the sky as “empathy”. With this idea of empathy, imagination was the key to the self being able to merge with any object.

Over the next few decades, empathy was extended to understanding other people. We can project our own remembered feelings of sadness or joy in response to another’s happy or sad expression, enabling us to grasp the emotion.

The term interpersonal empathy was developed and by the end of World War II, our understanding of empathy was defined in the way that we know it today. In the art world, theorists shifted their attention from the aesthetic encounter to the object itself, and aesthetic empathy faded into obscurity.

The Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy 

Sympathy is the feeling of genuine and sincere concern for another person experiencing difficult or painful events or emotions. On the other hand, empathy involves actively sharing in the person's emotional experience, which can be either positive or negative. This difference is also apparent in the way we relate to other people.

When we express empathy, we feel compassion and understanding towards another. Sympathy is more of a feeling of pity. Empathy is our ability to understand how someone feels, while sympathy is a sense of relief that we are not experiencing the same issues. 

When we relate to others with empathy, we provide a safe space for the other person to express and reflect on their emotions and feelings, allowing them to feel accepted and understood. With sympathy, we tend to move into problem-solving mode. We have ideas and judgments about how the person feels and what they should do based on our own experiences. This may minimise the other person’s problem, as we ignore their feelings, instead projecting our own experiences onto them. 

Sympathetic Joy

Just to confuse matters, the term sympathetic joy, which refers to the experience in which we spontaneously mirror each other’s enjoyment, like when babies or small children smile back or laughter spreads through a room even though we might not know where the amusement started, is much closer to empathy than sympathy.

The concept of sympathetic joy originated in Buddhism, where feeling happy, excited or contented in response to good things happening to other people, is a core aspirational virtue (and one of the four facets of loving-kindness). Sympathetic joy contrasts with jealousy, competitiveness or inadequacy, which may come up when we compare ourselves negatively to others who are celebrating or experiencing greatness. A 2019 paper in the journal Mindfulness suggests, sympathetic joy can strengthen social connections, make relationships more satisfying, and contribute to greater happiness in life. 

However, like many interpersonal skills, the amount of sympathetic joy a person may experience in life will differ by individual characteristics, life circumstances, and our regular thought, experiences and behaviours. 

Sympathetic joy is like a healthy emotional treat. We get to feel terrific at times that have nothing to do with ourselves. When practiced, sympathetic joy can make you a kinder person, as other people’s happiness can contribute to your own. And you get to share in other people’s joy more often, promoting positive emotions and feelings. The biggest barrier to sympathetic joy appears to be feelings of separateness or disconnection from other people in general, which can be described as loneliness. 

There are many science-backed techniques for strengthening social connection, such as doing a loving-kindness meditation or journaling exercise to reflect on shared identity. Small activities like these that strengthen shared humanity, pave the way for more joy in our lives, both when good things happen to us and when good things happen to other people.