Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

Read more in the app

Research revealed that women are better than men at understanding others (also known as ‘cognitive empathy’)

New research reveals risk factors for childhood abuse, both at the relationship and caretaker level. These include, among others: parenting stress, low empathy, low self-esteem, impulsiveness, loneliness, mental illness, limited knowledge of child development, and low family cohesion.

Research Links Increased Empathy With Live Theater Experience

An fMRI study (N=62) shows regulating the negative emotions of another person reduces our own stress, particularly if we are high in empathy. Regulating of another's emotions was mediated by increased activity in the social brain network (precuneus; the left temporoparietal junction).

Research shows the role empathy may play in music

Brain regions linked to empathy bigger in monkeys with more friends

Listening to friends tell you about their dreams helps develop empathy

Cynical people are less likely to respond with empathy and prosocial behavior after being socially excluded

Empathy softens teachers' biases, reduces racial gap in student suspensions

Are Chimpanzees Capable of Empathy?

'A Complex Form of Empathy': Boars Hatch Breakout Plan to Save Two Caged Piglets

What Rat Empathy May Reveal About Human Compassion

Can Virtual Reality Teach Empathy?

Why It Hurts to See Others Suffer: Pain and Empathy Linked in the Brain

Teens with secure family relationships "pay it forward" with empathy for friends

Empathy may drive rats and other mammals to help friends over strangers

Correcting misperceptions about, and increasing empathy for, migrants

Walking in their shoes: Using virtual reality to elicit empathy in healthcare providers

When parole, probation officers choose empathy, returns to jail decline