Empathy meaning: feeling with someone, not just for them

The empathy meaning, split into its parts

Psychologists often split empathy into two parts, and seeing both helps anyone trying to define empathy precisely:

1. Cognitive empathy: understanding what someone is thinking or feeling, a bit like reading the situation through their eyes.
2. Emotional (affective) empathy: actually feeling some of what they feel, such as sadness when a friend grieves.

Many writers add a third idea, sometimes called compassionate empathy, where understanding and feeling lead you to help. Not every act of empathy involves all three. A good negotiator may use the first kind without feeling much of the second.

Empathetic, empathic and empath

The empathetic definition is simple: showing or having empathy, as in an empathetic nurse, an empathetic reply. Empathic means the same thing. Both adjectives appeared in English around the same time in the early 1900s; empathetic is more common in everyday writing, and empathic is often preferred in psychology papers.

An empath definition is harder to pin down, because empath is a newer and looser word. In popular use it describes a person who feels other people's moods very intensely, sometimes to the point of being drained by crowds. In some fiction it means a character who can sense emotions by a special power. It is not a medical or scientific term, so treat it as informal.

Where the word came from

Empathy is a young word. German thinkers in the 1800s used Einfühlung, literally "feeling into", to describe how a viewer projects feeling into a painting or a landscape. Psychologists writing in English in the first decade of the 1900s formed empathy as a translation, building it from the Greek empatheia, "passion, strong feeling", from en (in) and pathos (feeling). The sense soon shifted from art to people, and it now mostly means understanding another person.

Empathy, sympathy and compassion

The lines blur in real speech, and none of the three is better than the others. Sympathy cards are perfectly kind, for example. The point is that empathy involves stepping into the other person's view.

What is the opposite of empathy?

There is no single perfect antonym. Depending on the situation, the opposite of empathy can be:

• indifference or apathy: not caring how someone feels
• callousness: a hard, unfeeling attitude toward others' pain
• self-absorption: being so focused on yourself that you do not notice others

In psychology, a lasting and serious lack of empathy is linked with certain personality conditions, but an off day or a tired reply does not mean someone lacks empathy.

Example sentences

• The teacher showed real empathy when the new student cried on his first day.
• Good customer service starts with empathy for the person on the phone.
• After losing his own job, he could empathize with friends who were job hunting.
• She wrote an empathetic note to her neighbor after the flood.
• Some people call themselves empaths because loud, tense rooms wear them out.

How to use empathy well

Common pairings include show empathy, have empathy for, feel empathy with, lack empathy and a sense of empathy. The verb is empathize with: "I empathize with your frustration." As a mass noun it takes words like great or deep, and it has no everyday plural.

At work, empathy is often listed as a leadership and teamwork skill. In medicine it is part of good patient care. For related words, see compassion and humility, or open the emotions and character hub for the full set.