Empathy
is one's ability to recognize, perceive and directly feel the emotion of
another person. As the states of mind, beliefs, and desires of others are intertwined
with their emotions, one with empathy for another may often be able to more
effectively divine another's modes of thought and mood. Empathy is often
characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes",
or experiencing the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort
of emotional resonance. In fiction, especially science fiction or fantasy
works, it may also refer to (or be associated with) a supernatural ability to
read others' emotions through psychic means.
Most
psychics have empathic abilities, either developed through time and experience,
or inherent from childhood.
While
the ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative
process that only fully develops with time, as later on in life, or with
considerable training, or investigation, or imagination, the roots of such
ability are probably innate to the empathizer's life, training, or
investigation.
Human
capacity to recognize the emotions of another is related to one's imitative capacities,
and seems to be grounded in one's innate capacity to associate the bodily
movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive
feelings of one's corresponding movements or expressions.
Humans
also seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice, and
body language of another and one's inner feeling. Hence, by looking at the
facial expressions or bodily movements of another, or by hearing another's tone
of voice, one may be able to get an immediate sense of how another seems to
feel on the inside. One experiences this as anything in a range, from
understanding, too directly experiencing, or to feeling another's emotion (say,
sadness or anger), rather than just noting the behavioral symptoms of another's
emotion. But clinicians must take care not to over-invest their own emotions at
the risk of draining away their own resourcefulness; thus awareness of one's
own limitations is prudent in a clinical situation, as in caregiving.
More
fully developed empathy requires more than simply recognizing another's
emotional state. Since emotions are typically directed towards objects or
states of affairs (either real or imaginary), the empathizer first requires
some idea of what that object might be.
Next,
the empathizer must determine how the emotional feeling will significantly
affect the way in which he perceives the other person. The empathizer needs to
determine the aspects of the person upon which to focus.
Hence
he must not only recognize the person toward which the other is directed, but
also then recognize the bodily feeling, and then add these components together.
The empathizer needs next to find the way into the loop where perception of the
other person generates feeling. That feeling affects the perception of the
other person. This process occurs before taking in account the character of the
other person as well as their wider non-psychological context (such as being
short or being a lawyer).
When
seeking to communicate with another, it may be helpful to demonstrate empathy
with the other, to open-up the channel of communication with the other. In this
case two methods of simulating empathy are possible:
a) either simulates the pretend
beliefs, desires, character traits and context of the other and sees what
emotional feelings this leads to;
b) or simulate the emotional feeling directly
perceived and then look around for a suitable reason for this to fit. Either
way, full empathetic engagement is supposed to help to understand and
anticipate the behavior of the other.
Empathy may be painful to oneself: seeing the pain of others,
especially as broadcasted by mass media, can cause one temporary or permanent
clinical depression; a phenomenon which is sometimes called weltschmerz.
One
must be careful not to confuse empathy with either sympathy, emotional
contagion or telepathy. Sympathy is the feeling of compassion for another, the
wish to see them better or happier, often described as "feeling
sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially a
child or a person in a mob) identifies with strong emotions others are showing
and becomes subject to the same emotions themselves. Telepathy is a
controversial paranormal phenomenon, which differs in that empathy is based not
upon the paranormal but upon sophisticated processing of what is seen and heard
in the usual way.
Sympathy is, "I'm sorry for
your pain."
Emotional Contagion is, "I feel your pain."
Empathy is, "I understand how you feel."
Telepathy is, "I know how you feel because I'm reading your mind."
Psychological
Perspectives
Some
experts (psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientists) believe that not
all humans have an ability to feel empathy or perceive the emotions of others.
For instance, Autism and related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome are
often (but not always) characterized by an apparent reduced ability to
empathize with others. The interaction between empathy and autism spectrum
disorders is a complex and ongoing field of research, and is discussed in
detail below.
According
to Simon Baron-Cohen's ideas, this absence
might be related to an absence of theory of mind (i.e., the ability to model
another's world view using either a theory-like analogy between oneself and
others, or the ability to simulate pretend mental states and then apply the
consequences of these simulations to others). Again, not all autistics fit this
pattern, and the theory remains controversial.
In
contrast, psychopaths are seemingly able to demonstrate the appearance of
sensing the emotions of others with such a theory of mind, often demonstrating
care and friendship in a convincing manner, and can use this ability to charm
or manipulate, but they crucially lack the sympathy or compassion that empathy
often leads to. Empathy certainly does not guarantee benevolence. The same
ability may underlie schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the pain of another
entity) and sadism (being sexually gratified through the infliction of pain or
humiliation on another person).
Moreover,
some research suggests that people are more able and willing to empathize with
those most similar to themselves. In particular, empathy increases with
similarities in culture and living conditions. We are also more likely to
empathize with those with which we interact more frequently.
Developing
skills of empathy is often a central theme in the recovery process for drug
addicts.
Even
more, people can empathize with animals. As such, empathy is thought to be a
driving psychological force behind the animal rights movement (an example of
sympathy), whether or not using empathy is justified by any real similarity
between the emotional experiences of animals and humans.
Empathy
and Autism Spectrum Disorders
A
common source of confusion in analyzing the interactions between empathy and
ASD is that the apparent lack of empathy may mask at least two other underlying
causes:
·
Excessive sensitivity or "overwhelm," may be
a cause of early learned suppression.
·
Failure to demonstrate empathy can arise from
inability (or not knowing how) to express empathy to others, as opposed to
difficulty feeling it internally.
A
higher level of empathy is sometimes reported by individuals with mild or high
functioning Asperger's syndrome, especially to animals and to other deeply held
emotions in people - anecdotally this may more often be so with
"high-functioning" individuals, or possibly, the strength of negative
empathic feelings with people might itself have been a contributing cause of
retreat into self.
Empathy
in animals
Some
students of animal behavior claim that empathy is not restricted to humans as
the definition implies. Examples include dolphins saving humans from drowning
or from shark attacks, and a multitude of behaviors observed in primates, both
in captivity and in the wild. Rodents have been shown to demonstrate empathy
for cagemates (but not strangers) in pain.
Organic
basis
Research
in recent years has focused on possible brain processes as concomitant with
empathy. Functional imaging has recently been employed to investigate the
functional anatomy of empathy: Farrow et al found that empathic judgments activated
left superior frontal gyrus, orbit frontal gyrus, precuneus, left anterior
middle temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus. Components of this circuit
may be dysfunctional in psychopathy (Tunstall N., Fahy T. and McGuire P. in: Guide
to Neuroimaging in Psychiatry, Eds. Fu C et al, Martin Dunitz: London
2003). Furthermore, the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys that fire both
when the creature watches another perform an action as well as when they
themselves perform it presents a possible neural mechanism for mapping others'
feelings onto one's own nervous system.
In
Bower (2005) the function of these mirror cells was further investigated. They
may be related to awareness of the goal-directedness of actions. These neurons
"may be responsible for understanding the intention of action in other
people," Kiyoshi Nakahara and Yasushi Miyashita, both of the University of
Tokyo School of Medicine said in a note which accompanies the Bower action.
Dapretto
et al. (2006) found that, as opposed to normally developing children,
high-functioning children with autism showed no mirror neuron activity in the
brain's inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis) while imitating and observing
emotional expressions. The authors suggest this supports the hypothesis that a
dysfunctional mirror neuron system may underlie the social deficits observed in
autism.
Development
of empathy
By
the age of 2, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of
empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person.
Sometimes, toddlers will comfort others or show concern for them as early as 24
months of age. Also during the second year, toddlers will play games of
falsehood or "pretend" in an effort to fool others, and this requires
that the child know what others believe before he or she can manipulate those
beliefs.
Other
Aspects
In
addition to the above use, the term empathy is also used by some people to
signify their heightened or higher sensitivity to the emotions and state of
others. This, reportedly, can lead to both positive aspects such as a more
skilled instinct for what is "behind the scenes" with people, but
also to difficulties such as rapid over-stimulation, overwhelm or stress caused
by an inability to protect oneself from this so-called 'pick-up'. Such people
may for example find crowds stressful simply due to picking up what is often
described as "white noise" or multiple emotions as they pass through
it, a phenomenon not to be confused with agoraphobia and sometimes informally
known as crowd-sickness.
Empathy
in this sense is ascribed by such people to various mechanisms. These include
simply more sophisticated subconscious processing of sensory cues or stronger
emotional feedback than the norm, (i.e. the normal human experience but more
so), and therefore fit within present models. Some people, perhaps due to
synesthesia, believe it instead to be a direct emotional sense or a feel for
others' "energy".
The
New Age religion has constructed a belief system around anecdotal evidence of
persons who claim to be "empaths" in this sense. This aspect of
empathy is not clinically recognized, and someone calling themselves an
"empath" usually does not intend to imply that they are gifted with
any psychic ability.
A
recurrent theme of discussion on such websites relates to the impact upon
individuals, and therefore also methods (including mental practices, emotional
processes and ritual) which anecdotally can help reduce the intensity of
empathic reactions to others' feelings to a more bearable level (informally
called 'shielding' or emotional detachment).
Fiction
The
empathic process is exploited to a certain extent in all kinds of fiction, thus
we may identify deeply with characters appearing in books, plays or films (see
especially Currie 2004).
In
some works of science fiction and fantasy, empathy is understood to be a
paranormal or psychic ability to sense the emotions of others, as opposed to
telepathy, which allows one to perceive thoughts as well. A person who has that
ability is also called an "empath" or "telempath" in this
context.
Empathy
Wikipedia