Empathy

Empathy can come in different forms, depending on the situations. Some of the different types of empathy that you might experience are:

Affective Empathy

Affective empathy involves understanding another person's emotions and responding appropriately. Such emotional understanding may lead to someone feeling concerned for another person's well-being, or it may lead to feelings of personal distress.

Somatic Empathy

Somatic empathy involves a physical reaction to what someone else is experiencing. People sometimes physically experience what another person is feeling. When you see someone else feeling embarrassed, for example, you might start to blush or have an upset stomach.

Cognitive Empathy

Cognitive empathy involves being able to understand another person's mental state and what they might be thinking in response to the situation. This relates to what psychologists call the theory of mind or thinking about what other people are thinking.

Empathy vs. Sympathy vs. Compassion

While sympathy and compassion are related to empathy, there are important differences. Compassion and sympathy are often thought to be more of a passive connection, while empathy generally involves a much more active attempt to understand another person.

The Many Benefits of Empathy

Being able to experience empathy has many beneficial uses. It's the ability that helps us see and feel what others might be experiencing. Because we relate to them, we can then respond in ways that foster stronger relationships.

It Strengthens your Relationships

Empathy allows you to build social connections with others. Understanding what people are thinking and feeling, you can respond appropriately in social situations. Research has shown that having social connections is important for both physical and psychological well-being.

It Helps You Regulate Your Emotions

Empathizing with others helps you learn to regulate your own emotions. Emotional regulation is important in that it allows you to manage what you are feeling, even in times of great stress, without becoming overwhelmed.

Research also suggests that our ability to regulate our own emotions influences how we respond to other people's emotions. Strengthening your self-regulation skills may be helpful if you want to boost your ability to empathize.

Reasons People Sometimes Lack Empathy

Some people lack empathy and, therefore, aren't able to understand what another person may be experiencing or feeling. This can result in behaviors that seem uncaring or sometimes even hurtful. For instance, people with low affective empathy have higher rates of cyberbullying.

A lack of empathy is also one of the defining characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder. Though, it is unclear whether this is due to a person with this disorder having no empathy at all or having more of a dysfunctional response to others.

A few reasons why people sometimes lack empathy include cognitive biases, dehumanization, and victim-blaming.

Cognitive Biases

Sometimes the way people perceive the world around them is influenced by cognitive biases. For example, people often attribute other people's failures to internal characteristics, while blaming their own shortcomings on external factors.

These biases can make it difficult to see all the factors that contribute to a situation. They also make it less likely that people will be able to see a situation from the perspective of another.

Tips for Practicing Empathy

Fortunately, empathy is a skill that you can learn and strengthen. If you would like to build your empathy skills, there are a few things that you can do:

• Work on listening to people without interrupting and utilize empathic listening

• Pay attention to body language and other types of nonverbal communication

• Try to understand people, even when you don't agree with them

• Ask people questions to learn more about them and their lives

• Imagine yourself in another person's shoes

• Strengthen your connection with others to learn more about how they feel

• Seek to identify biases you may have and how they affect your empathy for others

• Look for ways in which you are similar to others versus focusing on differences

• Be willing to be vulnerable, opening up about how you feel

• Engage in new experiences, giving you better insight into how others in that situation may feel

• Get involved in organizations that push for social change

While empathy might be lacking in some, most people are able to empathize with others in a variety of situations. This ability to see things from another person's perspective and empathize with another's emotions plays an important role in our social lives. Empathy allows us to understand others and, quite often, compels us to take action to relieve another person's suffering.