Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself
into another's shoes", or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself or to see from their point of view.
Afterall, we all occupy a different space in this time space "reality" world we all live in and therefore all have a different point of view.
It may be described metaphorically as an emotional kind of resonance or mirroring.
The English word empathy is derived the Greek (empatheia), "physical affection, passion, partiality" and that from (en), "in, at" + (pathos),
"feeling". The term was adapted by Theodore Lipps to create the German word Einfühlung ("feeling into") from which the English term
is then more directly derived.
We cannot develop creative solutions to complex human problems unless we can see, hear, open up to, and include the humanity of all the stakeholders
and of ourselves. Creativity requires all of our selves: our thoughts, feelings, personalities, histories, desires, and spirits. It is not sufficient
to listen rationally to inert facts and ideas; we also have to listen to people in a way that encourages them to realize their own potential and the
potential in their situation. This kind of listening is not sympathy, participating in someone else's feeling from alongside them. It is empathy,
participating from within them. This is the kind of listening that enables us not only to consider alternative existing ideas but to generate new ones.
Empathic development
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. Even earlier, at one year of age, infants have some rudiments of empathy, in the sense that they understand that, just like their own actions,
other people's actions have goals. 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 (Feldman, 1997).
In 1997, Douglas Olsen defined empathetic maturity as the cognitive structure that determines whether a person can feel or not feel empathy, who one
feels it for and how broad a group. Differences in empathetic maturity are differences in the way a person relates self-created meaning to meaning
perceived in others. Empathetic maturity provides the criteria for determining whether another will be experienced as "like me" or "different."
More inclusive criteria increase the number and diversity of others who will be perceived empathetically. The highest of the hierarchical stages
of empathetic maturity is the most inclusive where all others are perceived as "like me." (Olsen, 2001) There are three stages of empathetic
maturity (Olsen, 2001; and Olsen, 1997):
Stage 1 – This most primitive pattern and not common in adults. Persons at this stage see others as fundamentally different from themselves.
The rationales for another's actions, feelings, or thoughts are not experienced as having human relevance in the sense that one’s own rationales
do. Those operating at this stage perceive mutuality with others concretely.
Stage 2 – People at Stage 2 hold that their rationales for behavior are valid for everyone. And so, reasons for behaviors and feelings are
legitimate to the degree they coincide with the person at Stage 2. Unlike Stage 1, the Stage 2 person sees others like him or her so long as
they make sense of their world the same way. Therefore, positive regard for a sufferer perceived to be participating in negative behaviors is
difficult for the Stage 2 person unless the behavior is explicable from his or her point of view. An example of such negative behavior would
be AIDS as the result of sex practices not condoned by the Stage 2 observer. If the Stage 2 person believes the sufferer is responsible for
the behavior, he or she will have no empathy. If the Stage 2 person can detect an acceptable reason why the sufferer is not actually responsible,
for example, illness resulted from blood transfusion, beyond the sufferer's control, then empathy emerges. [Note: This "example" confuses empathy per
se, being the ability to recreate in one's mind the emotional or cognitive state of mind of another being and so understand that other being, with
the possible resulting sympathy/compassion a person feels towards a sufferer as a result of the empathy. Whether sympathy/compassion occurs clearly
also depends on the empath's value judgments and understanding of what caused the suffering, but the empathy that allows the person to understand that
suffering occurs is still present.] Caregivers at Stage 2 who want to feel empathetic toward their patients often try to find factors that mitigate
responsibility. Most of society operates at Stage 2.
Stage 3 – At this stage, mutuality occurs prior to any judgment about the person's behavior. The other is perceived as human in the same way the self
is experienced, based solely on being a creator of meaning rather than on the content of the meanings created. The perception of another person as
responsible for a problem no longer has the power to hinder the development of empathy. If the sufferer is seen as responsible, there is no longer
any need to mitigate that responsibility as a method for allowing empathy. A hallmark of Stage 3 is a person's ability to perceive another
empathetically while simultaneously and without apparent contradiction perceiving that other as responsible for problematic behavior.
Since empathy involves understanding the emotions of other people, the way it is characterized is derivative of the way emotions themselves are
characterized. If for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another
will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by combinations of beliefs and desires, then grasping
these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy.
Furthermore, a distinction should be made between deliberately imagining being another person, or being in their situation, and simply recognizing
their emotion. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However the basic capacity to recognize
emotions is probably innate and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained, and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.
The human capacity to recognize the bodily feelings of another is related to one's imitative capacities, and seems to be grounded in the
innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of producing
those corresponding movements or expressions oneself. Humans also seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice and
other vocal expressions and inner feeling.
There is some debate concerning how exactly the conscious experience (or phenomenology) of empathy should be characterized. The basic
idea is that by looking at the facial expressions or bodily movements of another, or by hearing their tone of voice, one may get an
immediate sense of how they feel (as opposed to more intellectually noting the behavioral symptoms of their emotion). Though empathic
recognition is likely to involve some form of arousal in the empathiser, they may not experience this feeling as belonging to their own body,
but instead likely to perceptually locate the feeling 'in' the body of the other person. Alternatively the empathiser may instead get a
sense of an emotional 'atmosphere' or that the emotion belongs equally to all the parties involved.
More fully developed empathy requires more than simply recognizing another's emotional state. Since emotions are typically directed towards
objects or states of affairs, the empathiser may first require some idea of what that object might be (where object can include imaginary
objects, concepts, other people, or even the empathiser). Alternatively the recognition of the feeling may precede the recognition of the
object of that emotion, or even aid the empathiser in discovering the object of the other's emotion. The empathiser may also need to
determine how the emotional state affects the way in which the other perceives the object. For example, the empathizer needs to determine
which aspects of the object to focus on. Hence it is often not enough that the empathiser recognize the object toward which the other is
directed, plus the bodily feeling, and then simply add these components together. Rather the empathiser needs to find the way into the
loop where perception of the object affects feeling and feeling affects the perception of the object. The following sequence of examples
identifies some of the major factors in empathizing with another:
I sense that:
Frank is feeling annoyed, (via facial, vocal or postural expression).
Frank is feeling annoyed due to not getting what he wants, (general object of emotion).
Frank is feeling annoyed because he missed his train, (particular object of emotion)
Frank is feeling annoyed because he missed his train, but only by a few seconds, (focus of particular object).
Frank is feeling annoyed because he only just missed his train and he had an important meeting to get to, (background non-psychological context).
Frank is feeling annoyed because he only just missed his train, and he had an important meeting and because he is generally an irritable sort
of person (character traits).
