What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?

I just finished teaching a class this morning and this came up during a design thinking segment. It's a male-heavy class and when these terms come up, they tend to laugh it off as some kind of esotherical side-quest. When I ask if anyone feels comfortable explaining the difference, it always ends in a beautiful disaster because that one person feeling brave enough to go for it, usually completely derails, only to be taken over by another student taking it into a similar dead-end. It almost always ends with them agreeing that this is a complex topic and therefore impossible to pin down.

I then bring up the scenario of someone who lost their dog (in a tragic freak accident) a while back...

A sympathic friend asks them how they cope, or feel, they acknowledge the fact that there is a process of grief happening. They show sympathy by observing your state from the outside.

The empathic friend stops by to check how they can help and then leaves with the rest of the dog food. They're able to walk a moment in your shoes and see the problems you're facing.

Which, I think, should be a fundamental quality of a good product manager, planner or user researcher.

Anyways, dumb teaching stuff, but I kinda like the example.

I recently watched a talk by a Registered Nurse on a topic she calls "assertive empathy". It's a bit long at 41 minutes[0], but the real world examples were particularly interesting to me.

An example that runs throughout the talk involves a young man who is verbally abusive and physically threatening to the nursing staff. His behavior is causing them real difficulty in just doing their jobs of assisting with his recovery. The solution? Demonstrate empathy ("I understand that what you're going through is hard and we're here to help.") but be assertive and set boundaries ("But you must show us the same level of respect we show you. We won't tolerate abuse."). By holding that line while continuing to show care, she eventually catalyzed a change in his behavior toward them. This assertive empathy is seen as the height of respect by this patient who might not feel respected anywhere else in his life.

Having been hospitalized myself, I know just how amazing a good nurse can be. I think the world would be a better place if we all learned more about human interaction from experienced nurses.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYU9yTp0lD4

12 year old me playing D&D: "What is the purpose of having separate intelligence and wisdom stats? They are the same thing!"

Older me: "Oh."

This has no place on HN.

Deepak Chopra is a charlatan on par with some edgy teenager running his own blog but professing to be the equivalent of a respected doctor or scientist.

Here he is getting his "beliefs" exposed to some pretty basic questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka--VV-_t_U

I'm going to flag this so dang can investigate further.

I'm not particularly religious these days, but I was raised a Christian. When I was around 10 learning about the ideas behind empathy, sympathy and compassion this song always came to mind[1].

I think compassion is doing something with your empathy and sympathy. I think compassion is really important, more people should "cross over the road".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCP5gHlasf8

I am a clinical psychologist and did research related to empathy and compassion.

Often in clinical work I have seen almost the exact opposite distinction between empathy and sympathy with empathy being understanding and sympathy being shared feeling.

In the research, definitions are muddy and one of the main problems with empathy research (IMO) is that each research group seems to use their own definition and these definitions are often incompatible. My own preferred definition defines cognitive and affective empathy, with cognitive being the understanding and affective being sharing in the emotion.

I personally don’t care for the way the article defines these things. It seems to contrast sharply with more or less all scientific and clinical uses of the terms AND the everyday use of sympathy which does NOT commonly mean understanding but usually something like pity or just “feeling for”.

It almost seems like the author accidentally switched empathy and sympathy throughout the article.

This isn't a bad piece, but it somewhat oversimplifies these concepts. For example, "compathy" is more directly "viscerally feeling what another feels" while "empathy" is more accurately defined as the intellectual or emotional capacity for engaging in compathy. That capacity can be grounded in actually feeling what the observed other feels -- which, arguably, is impossible if the observed is experiencing something the observer has no shared personal experience with -- or by feeling what an observer imagines the observer would feel if sharing the personal experience of an observed. Actual empathy _requires_ that one is "able to understand what the person is feeling" -- which is what this piece uses as the (somewhat imprecise) definition of "sympathy".

Similarly, "sympathy" is more accurately defined as "(the expression of) understanding of what the person is feeling" ... one need not actually understand the feelings of another to engage in sympathy (ie, most sympathy does not require actual empathy, but actual sympathy does require actual empathy), and often actual compassion (which derives from actual empathy) requires one to not engage in actual sympathy.

Nevertheless, good to see an attempt to unpack these terms.

> “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

... and try to recognize that what is desired, but not attained (happiness) is not as important or impactful as what is practiced, but not mastered (compassion).

Fun fact: empathy comes from the Greek word «εμπάθεια» which nowadays means disliking someone. The word change meaning throughout the years, so in English retained the original meaning while in modern Greek the meaning is the exact opposite.

The result is ofc confusion when someone is using the word in Greek, because often times one can’t be sure what is the authors intent :-)

There's a quote in the book "Radical Candor" which talks about Empathy vs Compassion which I rather like:

"picture yourself walking along a mountainous trail. You come across a person being crushed by a boulder on their chest. The empathetic response would be to feel the same sense of crushing suffocation, thus rendering you helpless. The compassionate response would be to recognize that that person is in pain and to do everything within your power to remove the boulder and alleviate their suffering. Put another way, compassion is empathy plus action."

Huh. On the face of it, the way Chopra defines these are fairly simple, yet powerful way to make sense of this.

… but, I am not sure it is complete.

For example, the way Chopra defined sympathy and empathy is the way psychologists define cognitive empathy and affective empathy. It implies that sympathy is something else all together. (The way I learned sympathy in the colloquial sense is more along the lines of virtue signaling, or at least a show of solidarity)

As for Chopra’s definition of compassion, I don’t think it adequately distinguishes it from pity. Furthermore, I have experienced compassion in a form that was not about relieving suffering (not exactly) … admittedly though, this is gettin to into the Buddhist view of things.

Empathy: the ability to feel what others feel.

Sympathy: you align with that they feel, not merely understand it.

Compassion: you're doing something about it, not merely aligning with it.

I've come across several articles and discussions that suggests empathy is a bit of a trap. You may feel what someone else is feeling, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're helping them. I'm currently reading Rutget Bregman's Humankind: A Hopeful History (Dutch: De Meeste Mensen Deugen) about how people in emergency situations or when society breaks down, tend to be far more altruistic than we usually tell ourselves. The exact opposite of Lord of the Flies turns out to be true. But then where does xenophobia come from? One of the culprits, he suggests, might be empathy. As we feel and identify more strongly with one person who have something in common with, we tend to see other people as more different. So xenophobia might be the other side of the same coin as empathy.

Not sure if it's true, and I haven't finished the book yet, but Bregman tends to be pretty thorough in his research, and he does base this idea on experiments.

In the world of nonviolent communication where empathy is one of the central concept, empathy occurs when a person feels felt.

When empathy occurs, the person who is experiencing the feelings, and now feels felt and understood on the level of the feeling, has the resources to digest / process, understand, and move forward / shift.

Learning how to give empathy to others and self is one of the most important outcomes of the training.

What makes it difficult to teach is that it is less of an intellectual process, it is closer to a felt presence experience, and very simple.

I have an roleplay exercise called “not empathy” going through the standard cultural approaches like telling a similar story, or telling the feeling person that whoever wronged them is the bad guy/gal, or reminding them how valuable their experience is as learning or that soon they’ll be laughing from the distance of time. None of these is empathy and none provides the space needed for the shift.

Empathy: I feel what you feel/understand where you're coming from

Sympathy: I like you/I feel for you/It hurts me when you're hurt

Compassion: I feel bad/want to help when you feel bad

There's some overlap, and each is often needed to get the others

This might be a great article, but it is important to note that this comes from a company founded by Deepak Chopra, who is a famous figure and undoubtedly has done some good work but is a deeply flawed person, perhaps a charlatan really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra

> Chopra has metaphorically described the AIDS virus as emitting "a sound that lures the DNA to its destruction". The condition can be treated, according to Chopra, with "Ayurveda's primordial sound".[18] Taking issue with this view, medical professor Lawrence Schneiderman has said that ethical issues are raised when alternative medicine is not based on empirical evidence and that, "to put it mildly, Dr. Chopra proposes a treatment and prevention program for AIDS that has no supporting empirical data".

> Chopra has been criticized for his frequent references to the relationship of quantum mechanics to healing processes, a connection that has drawn skepticism from physicists who say it can be considered as contributing to the general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.[136] In 1998, Chopra was awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in physics for "his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness"

> In May 1991, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article by Chopra and two others on Ayurvedic medicine and TM.[144] JAMA subsequently published an erratum stating that the lead author, Hari M. Sharma, had undisclosed financial interests, followed by an article by JAMA associate editor Andrew A. Skolnick which was highly critical of Chopra and the other authors for failing to disclose their financial connections to the article subject.[145] Several experts on meditation and traditional Indian medicine criticized JAMA for accepting the "shoddy science" of the original article.[146] Chopra and two TM groups sued Skolnick and JAMA for defamation, asking for $194 million in damages, but the case was dismissed in March 1993.

Not someone with a great track record.

I really like this description of empathy vs sympathy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZBTYViDPlQ

It was the first time I "got it".

Listen to this article (5min) at https://playtext.app/doc/clggowx2f0002jp0fal6qzpbu

I'd recommend this article and author as an alternative authority on the subject

https://www.empathy-driven-development.com/defining-empathy-...

I've seen conflicting definitions, of course...

I think it's important to keep in mind that you're not necessarily being "nice" with this sort of sense. If you want to hurt someone emotionally, empathy can help tell you where to stick the figurative knife for maximum damage

I really really dislike this shit with empathy/sympathy/compassion and how its considered good.

It only works when your thought patterns are "normal". As soon as you stray from acceptable norms, this shit just makes it easy to judge you as weird and a freak.

Empathy deals with the emotional systems (I feel you). Sympathy deals with intellectual (I understand what you feel or imagine it must feel like x). Compassion is a transcendent experience in which you try to imagine yourself in the shoes of another.

I always think of manipulative people.

They might be sympathetic to your situation, but they do not have compassion, meaning they employ their understanding to F you over.

Sympathy is good for the good, but for bad actors, it is a tool to use against others.

Empathy is knowing the mental feelings of someone because you’ve known them. Sympathy is knowing the physical symptoms of someone because you’ve felt them. Compassion is a way of acting when knowing empathy and sympathy.

Q: What's the Difference Between [Subjective Definition 1], [Subjective Definition 2], and [Subjective Definition 3]?

A: They are different subjective definitions.

This should have been the whole article.

I think it's clearer to create a tree:

Empathy |--Sympathy (positive view of the result of empathizing) |--Antipathy (negative view of the result of empathizing)

For example, one could empathize with someone who is consumed with hatred of other people, and possibly understand how they came to adopt that view, while strongly disliking that kind of mentality, and that would be antipathy. One could even have compassion for such a person, while also accepting that they need to be locked up in a prison because of their history of serial murder of other people.

Alternatively, one could empathize with a parent fleeing a war zone with children in tow, and most people would be sympathetic towards that person and their motivations, because one could understand why a parent would want to protect their children from harm, at a personal emotional level. A compassionate response would be to say, "Perhaps our government / community can provide some basic resources for these people, and why not also try to stop that war from continuing so we don't have to take in all these refugees, as well?"

Empathy doesn't really have an opposite, but it is a capability which may be missing in some people, comparable to vision vs. blindness. A person lacking any sense of empathy is somewhat rare, but they do exist and are generally categorized as sociopathic narcissists... they do tend to be a bit on the power-mad side of things, and hence are more frequently found running governments, corporations, and (other?) organized crime cartels, as well as starting wars, etc.

Perhaps the lack of empathy is genetic in nature? Someone could come up with a DNA test, perhaps.

Imagining these three as a spectrum, and not three static silos, is most helpful.

The inability to naturally and spontaneously think or feel empathy, sympathy, and compassion is one of the hallmarks of the psychopath. Faking these three for approval is also the hallmarks possibly making one a psychopath.