Eli5: what is the difference between sympathy and empathy?

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People have tried explaining it to me before and I never really understood the difference. I’m hoping a simple explanation will help.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I think that empathy is the ability to understand and feel compassion for someone, while sympathy is the actual feeling sorry for someone and their situation.

Anonymous 0 Comments

EDIT: My initial post was confusing so…

From Merriam-Webster:

The difference in meaning is usually explained with some variation of the following:

***Sympathy*** is when you *share the feelings of another*

***Empathy*** is when you *understand* the feelings of another but do not necessarily *share* them.

To make it easy to remember: S is for Sympathy; S is for sharing.

You share the feeling.

E is for Empathy; E for emotional understanding.

You imagine how they feel based on what you know about this person.

The sentiment behind empathy is often presented in the familiar idiom “to put (oneself) in another’s shoes.”

>Empathy has become a fad word for sympathy, though it was adopted expressly to mean something different from sympathy: ‘intellectual insight into another’s emotional state without sharing in it.’

—John H. Dirckx, The Language of Medicine (2nd Ed.), 1993

Anonymous 0 Comments

Sympathy is understanding someone because you’ve been in that situation before. “I sympathize with you being exhausted after working 12 hours because I have also been exhausted from working 12 hours .” (**S** = **S**ympathy = **S**elf)

Empathy is understanding someone (or trying to) by putting yourself in their shoes. “I am not a parent but I can empathize with you on how tiring it must be because you have more people to care for and more work to do to care for them.” (**E** = **E**mpathy = someone **E**lse)

Anonymous 0 Comments

Sympathy is when you feel bad or sorry for someone.

Empathy is when you understand how someone is feeling, usually because you’ve felt something similar.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A close relative dies. You *sympathize* with your family members over the loss, as you’re sharing these feelings together and it’s personally affecting you.

A stranger dies. You *empathize* with their family, because you understand the loss, but are not personally affected.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Sympathy means you just feel sorry for a person, empathy is a deeper version of that where you understand what that person is going through and can put yourself in their shoes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Sympathy refers to a person who has had the same experiences as another.

Empathy refers to a person who has not had the same experience but instead can express feelings and emotions appropriate with being able to cognitively understand a situation.

Example: I live in a city that is having a super hard time dealing with increased houselessness. I have personally been houseless and know exactly how it feels and the circumstances that lead to it and the houseless community writ large. I can sympathize with folks who are houseless as opposed to be a judgemental about it.

A person who has never experienced houselessness but has engaged or educated themselves regarding the issue and understand the varying circumstances in which folks can find themselves on the streets – will be able to empathize with the situation because they understand the nuances of it without judging the folks writ large.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Empathy is when you walk in another persons shoes (or situation). You try to imagine how things might actually feel to that person. That is why it is called walking in someone else’s shoes. If you were really walking in their shoes, it means you would be the other person and it would be happening to you instead of in front of you. Empathy is a much deeper feeling and you are more emotionally involved. It makes it closer in some ways to an experience where as sympathy is just observing, watching without getting involved. Sympathy is when you feel sorry for the other person but you don’t try to feel how they might actually feel.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Answer: Someone who can feel sympathy can also feel remorse and have some moral compass. Could be the worse compass but it is an emotion.

Empathy means that you also feel what another person is feeling. Could be as simple as reading the word ‘puke’ to sharing someone’s loss.

It’s when these ‘antennas’ is missing we start to label people as sociopaths or even psychopaths.

They ‘know’ about empathy except they have never experienced it themselves

A typical human will cry if watching a sad act in a movie. We feel the pain that someone else is going through. Someone lacking empathy may also cry, because he or she find it is expected from them.

Note that lacking empathy doesn’t turn you into an ivul serialkiller. Some do as they can’t care. They simply can’t experience concepts like ‘love’

Anonymous 0 Comments

I am a man.

I **sympathize** with my girlfriend when she has period cramps. I know she is in pain, but I really have no idea what she’s going through.

I **empathize** with my friends when they get hit in the balls. I too have been hit in the balls and I understand their pain.