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Empathy and sympathy are often mixed up, but they're totally different emotions. A psychotherapist explains the key differences between the two reactions:
The difference between sympathy and compassion is that the former responds to others' suffering with sorrow and concern whereas the latter responds with warmth and care. [2] An article in Clinical Psychology Review suggests that "compassion consists of three facets: noticing, feeling, and responding". [3]
A person feels compassion when they notice others are in need, and this feeling motivates that person to help. Like empathy, compassion has a wide range of definitions and purported facets (which overlap with some definitions of empathy). [20] Sympathy is a feeling of care and understanding for someone in need.
These other-oriented emotions include feelings of tenderness, sympathy, compassion and soft-heartedness. Empathic concern is often confused with empathy. To empathize is to respond to another's perceived emotional state by experiencing feeling of a similar sort.
Compassion and empathy sound like synonyms, but they're two different skill sets. Here's how and why to hone both qualities, according to psychologists.
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion is a 2016 book written by psychologist Paul Bloom. The book draws on the distinctions between empathy , compassion , and moral decision making. Bloom argues that empathy is not the solution to problems that divide people and is a poor guide for decision making.
Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. [ 1 ] According to philosopher David Hume , this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need.
It is the difference between intrapersonal emotions, such as joy and grief, and interpersonal emotions, such as anger, that causes the difference in sympathy, according to Smith. That is, intrapersonal emotions trigger at least some sympathy without the need for context whereas interpersonal emotions are dependent on context.