I always thought I knew what the differences where but today I’m getting them confused.
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With sympathy you merely feel sorry for someone’s misfortune. With empathy, you have the ability to understand and share that emotion and feeling with someone.
Sympathy – Sorry that happened. Have you tried yoga?
Empathy – Sorry that happened. I understand where you’re coming from as I’ve gone through it myself.
The difference between empathy and compassion is that empathy is a genuine understanding of the emotions, thoughts, positions, and behaviors of others, while compassion is more about emotional empathy with others; however, there is a real overlap between the two. Empathy is specifically about putting oneself into the role of another person in a given event, experiencing the other person’s feelings and logic in the context of the environment and one’s own physical and psychological state in order to be closer to the “other” in its place.
Sympathy is about recognizing that someone is suffering. Things like “I’m sorry you’re going through this, it must be rough.” You’re showing that you see them hurting and that you care about them but it’s often just surface level. You might not really understand what they’re going through, but you want them to know you care.
Empathy is about being able to connect with their feelings and feel them like they are a part of your own. Some people are naturally empathic but others can become empathetic based on their own experiences. Like if you had a friend who’s just been dumped and you have also had that experience of heartbreak, the level of connecting and understanding of their feelings is deeper.
Both are about feeling and expressing care and concern for someone who’s in a bad spot. Sympathy is more external, it’s about communicating that you feel bad for them; Empathy is more internal and about feeling a connection with someone’s suffering and sharing it.
Sympathy generally means feeling bad about someone’s misfortune. If someone’s cat just died and they’re having a miserable day, you might be very sympathetic; you know what it’s like to suffer loss, and you feel for them.
To be sympathetic to someone’s position is more like looking favourably upon it, or sharing their views.
Empathy is a little more contextual.
In one usage, empathy means mirror-neuron stuff: being elevated by someone else’s laughter or joy, wincing at their pain, sharing in their evident distress, etc.
In another usage, it means *genuinely understanding their motivations*.
In that context, it’s good and important, for instance, to empathize with people who have done terrible things. It doesn’t mean that you look favourably on their position, or that you feel the same emotions as them. Instead, it means that you have an accurate mental model of what makes them act that way, rather than simply ascribing their actions to being all grarr-i-am-evil – because without understanding the problem, you’re powerless to affect it.
Being able to keep the two things separate – understanding someone’s thinking, without having to agree (or conversely, disagreeing without having to crudely demonise them), is a very important and under-valued social skill.
With sympathy you merely feel sorry for someone’s misfortune. With empathy, you have the ability to understand and share that emotion and feeling with someone.
Sympathy – Sorry that happened. Have you tried yoga?
Empathy – Sorry that happened. I understand where you’re coming from as I’ve gone through it myself.
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