Basics+of+Empathy

=Basics of Empathy=

Various Definitions of Empathy*
• The ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand his or her emotions andfeelings// a form of simulation, or inner imitation // ][4] • A complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoningare combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others[5] • An affective response more appropriate to someone else’s situation than to one’s own[6] • An other-oriented emotional response congruent with the other's perceived welfare[7] • An affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional stateor condition, and which is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel in thegiven situation[8] situation than with one’s own. Another important aspect of the construct of empathy is that it mustinvolve some self-other differentiation, which makes it distinct from related reactions such as emotionalcontagion and personal distress.
 * Note that these definitions point to an emotional experience that is more congruent with another’s

(From: Decety and Lamm: Social Neuroscience of Empathy) []

Alternatively,

From **Prosocial Behavior and Empathy: Developmental Processes**

Empathy has been defined in two ways:

 * (a)** the cognitive awareness of another person's internal states (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, intentions);
 * (b)** the vicarious affective response to another person.

===Five empathy -arousal modes have been identified (Hoffman [|1978]).=== __Three are primitive, automatic, and preverbal.__ The empathy aroused by these three modes is passive, involuntary, based on the pull of surface cues, and requires little cognitive processing. __Two empathy -arousing modes are higher order cognitive__. What they contribute to empathy is scope; they also allow one to empathize with others who are not present.
 * (a) Mimicry**, which has two steps: one spontaneously imitates another's facial, vocal, or postural expressions of feeling, producing changes in one's own facial or postural musculature; these changes trigger afferent feedback to the brain, which results in feelings that resemble the other's feelings.
 * (b) Classical conditioning**, in which empathic distress becomes a conditioned response to distress in others through observing others in distress at the same time that one is in actual distress.
 * (c) Direct association of cues from others or their situation with one's own painful past experience**.
 * (a) Verbally mediated association:** language communicates the other's distress and connects the other's situation to one's own painful past experience.
 * (b) Perspective-taking:** one feels something of the victim's distress by imagining how one would feel in the victim's place and/or trying to imagine directly how the victim feels by using information one has about him or her.

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