Empathy - Cognitive and Emotional

 

Empathy is the ability cognitively and emotionally recognize and understand the experience of another. Empathy is an important component of relationships. Empathy varies from low to high ability.

Cognitive empathy is the range of ability to understand the perspective (perspective taking) of another person and may be present with a high to low range of emotional empathy. 

Emotional empathy is the range of ability to feel what another person feels.

Neuropsychological studies have identified brain areas related to empathy including the motor mirror system. See the APS Observer 2018.

Differences in definitions: Some writers do not include the two components of cognitive and emotional empathy. Some write as if empathy and its components are either or--that is, a person has or does not have empathy. However, in psychology, many abilities like empathy vary in degree such that a person may range from high to low on empathy or its components of cognitive and emotional empathy.

Empathy has also been studied in animals.

Examples

Example 1: A person high in psychopathy may have high cognitive empathy enabling the person to understand the thinking or viewpoint of another, but also be low in emotional empathy, which can lead to taking advantage of another person without an awareness of their feelings.

Example 2: A downside of high emotional empathy is that it can lead to personal distress. This has been called emotional contagion in some research reports.

Concepts: Cognitive empathy,   Emotional Empathy Emotional contagion

Related concepts: perspective taking, social roles, role playing

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