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Empathy Essays

Hook examples for empathy essays, anecdotal hook.

"As I witnessed a stranger's act of kindness towards a struggling neighbor, I couldn't help but reflect on the profound impact of empathy—the ability to connect with others on a deeply human level."

Rhetorical Question Hook

"What does it mean to truly understand and share in the feelings of another person? The concept of empathy prompts us to explore the complexities of human connection."

Startling Statistic Hook

"Studies show that empathy plays a crucial role in building strong relationships, fostering teamwork, and reducing conflicts. How does empathy contribute to personal and societal well-being?"

"'Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.' This profound quote encapsulates the essence of empathy and its significance in human interactions."

Historical Hook

"From ancient philosophies to modern psychology, empathy has been a recurring theme in human thought. Exploring the historical roots of empathy provides deeper insights into its importance."

Narrative Hook

"Join me on a journey through personal stories of empathy, where individuals bridge cultural, social, and emotional divides. This narrative captures the essence of empathy in action."

Psychological Impact Hook

"How does empathy impact mental health, emotional well-being, and interpersonal relationships? Analyzing the psychological aspects of empathy adds depth to our understanding."

Social Empathy Hook

"In a world marked by diversity and societal challenges, empathy plays a crucial role in promoting understanding and social cohesion. Delving into the role of empathy in society offers important insights."

Empathy in Literature and Arts Hook

"How has empathy been depicted in literature, art, and media throughout history? Exploring its representation in the creative arts reveals its enduring significance in culture."

Teaching Empathy Hook

"What are effective ways to teach empathy to individuals of all ages? Examining strategies for nurturing empathy offers valuable insights for education and personal growth."

Making a Positive Impact on Others: The Power of Influence

Helping others in need: importance of prioritizing yourself, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

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How Empathy and Understanding Others is Important for Our Society

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Steps for Developing Empathy in Social Situations

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Importance of Empathy for Blind People

The most effective method to tune in with empathy in the classroom, thr way acts of kindness can change our lives, the power of compassion and its main aspects, compassion and empathy in teaching, acts of kindness: importance of being kind, the concept of empathy in "do androids dream of electric sheep", the vital values that comprise the definition of hero, critical analysis of kwame anthony appiah’s theory of conversation, development of protagonist in philip k. novel "do androids dream of electric sheep", talking about compassion in 100 words, my purpose in life is to help others: helping behavior, adolescence stage experience: perspective taking and 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.

Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

Empathy-based socialization differs from inhibition of egoistic impulses through shaping, modeling, and internalized guilt. Empathetic feelings might enable individuals to develop more satisfactory interpersonal relations, especially in the long-term. Empathy-induced altruism can improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups, and to improve racial attitudes, and actions toward people with AIDS, the homeless, and convicts. It also increases cooperation in competitive situations.

Empathetic people are quick to help others. Painkillers reduce one’s capacity for empathy. Anxiety levels influence empathy. Meditation and reading may heighten empathy.

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Advances in Psychological Science ›› 2017 , Vol. 25 ›› Issue (11) : 1922-1931. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2017.01922

• Regular Articles • Previous Articles Next Articles

Hot topics on the research in empathy from the perspective of neuroscience

JIE Jing 1,2 ; ZHUANG Mengdi 1 ; LUO Pinchao 1 ; ZHENG Xifu 1

( 1 School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China) ( 2 Center for Mental Health Education, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China)
Received: 2017-02-06 Online: 2017-11-15 Published: 2017-09-25
Contact: ZHENG Xifu, E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: E-mail: [email protected]
Supported by:

1. 探讨2016版国际胰瘘研究小组定义和分级系统对胰腺术后患者胰瘘分级的影响.PDF (500KB)

Abstract: Empathy refers to the ability to share and understand other people’s emotions and thoughts. Recently, the neural mechanisms underlying empathy have been attracting more and more attention in neuroscience research. However, most existing studies focus on affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathy for physical pain, leaving empathy for social experiences, positive empathy and counter-empathic responses relatively understudied. Moreover, because of differences in research paradigms and individual approaches, the results of these studies are controversial. Future research should focus on designing more ecologically valid research paradigms; further deepening and refining the study of the neural mechanisms of empathy; exploring the characteristics of people with different empathic abilities including underlying neural mechanisms; and exploring factors that moderate empathic responses.

Key words: affective empathy, cognitive empathy, empathy for pain, positive empathy, counter-empathic responses

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JIE Jing, ZHUANG Mengdi, LUO Pinchao, ZHENG Xifu. Hot topics on the research in empathy from the perspective of neuroscience[J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2017, 25(11): 1922-1931.

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URL: https://journal.psych.ac.cn/xlkxjz/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1042.2017.01922

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Exploring empathy: Research on a hot (but tricky) topic

This post shares a presentation made by Adam Nilsen, Miriam Bader, and myself at the American Alliance of Museums conference last week. Adam Nilsen is a graduate student in Stanford University’s School of Education, where he is studying empathy in a variety of settings, including museum settings. Prior to working on his PhD, Adam was a researcher at the Oakland Museum of California, where he researched and curated exhibits on California history. Miriam Bader is the Director of Education at the Tenement Museum.

During the presentation, I offered an introduction, Adam shared research on empathy, and Miriam illustrated with examples from the Tenement Museum. In order to indicate the speaker, I have divided sections with horizontal lines, and indicated the speaker for each section.

This is a picture of The Tenement Museum in New York City. The Tenement Museum tells the stories of the apartment building at 97 Orchard Street, which housed nearly 7000 immigrants between 1863 and 1935. Visitors are taken through the building on guided tours which generally focus on one or two historical families and their experiences.

Last year I was working as a consultant, and I was fortunate enough to do some work with this museum. We were looking at their tours and a set of visitor responses, including an empathetic response. Empathy seemed, and seems, like a critical outcome of a visit to the Tenement Museum – in fact, one past study showed that, after their visit to the museum, nearly a quarter of visitors reported feeling empathy with immigrants of the past.

But it is also problematic: How do we know if people are experiencing empathy? Is empathy always good? What is empathy, and why should museums care about it?

In order to learn more about empathy, I reached out to Stanford’s school of education, and found Adam Nilsen, who is an expert in this area, which led to this presentation. Before Adam talks about the research, I am going to set the stage by briefly defining empathy, and talking about why it is important, and what this has to do with museums.

So here is a quick definition:

Empathy is a feeling of shared emotion with another person. It is not “I understand what you are feeling,” but rather, “I am feeling what you are feeling.”
Empathy is often the result of what history educators call “Perspective taking.” Perspective taking is imagining or hypothesizing about what it would be like to be in another person’s shoes. Because they are so entwined, the phrase perspective taking is often used interchangeably with the word empathy.

The 19 th century author George Eliot spoke beautifully about this, although she did not use the word empathy. She was talking about art rather than more generally about museums, but the impact she describes will resonate with any museum professional or visitor. In her 1856 essay “The Natural History of German Life,” Eliot wrote,

“The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment…. when Hornung paints a group of chimney-sweepers, — more is done towards linking the higher classes with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.”

So empathy is important and museums are good at eliciting empathy. I’ll put that in my next grant proposal – done! What more do I need to know?

There is, in fact, a body of research about empathy, and how to elicit it. Museums can draw on this research to improve our chances of evoking empathetic responses, and for understanding the potential impact and value of evoking these responses.

Around age 5, we start understanding that other people have different thoughts/feelings, and distinguishing between what we know and what others know.

Empathy is different from sympathy, which is feeling sorry or concern for a person in distress, as opposed to imagining the person’s perspective or sharing their emotion.

Empathy is seen as essential to smooth social functioning (imagine issues you may have had where someone is unwilling to see your perspective).

Furthermore, people who are highly empathic tend to behave in more caring, considerate ways toward others. Plus, researchers have also found that when we are encouraged to take the perspective of a member of a stereotyped group, we are less likely to apply stereotypes to that person. It is more powerful than telling someone “don’t stereotype,” which does the opposite.

SO, there are plenty of reasons why educators want to promote it.

It can be difficult to get out of our own heads. Although we’re not 5-year-olds, we still have egocentric bias – our initial instinct is to view things from our own perspectives. It takes mental effort to understand the perspective of another person.

History educators have used the term “presentism” to describe egocentric bias in reference to understanding people in the past. It is hard for us to not assume that people of the past thought the same way that we do. We easily think that they are just like us, but with weird clothes. As a result, history educators have reported volumes of examples of students thinking that past people were stupid and backwards. “A town full of people accusing each other of witchcraft? Eating ‘witch cakes’ to determine who was guilty? What idiocy!”, students think as they fail to understand the complexities of a time and place where such an act was perfectly logical.

So how do we combat presentism/egocentric bias? Two possibilities:

(1) Context is essential: We need to be informed, or we need enough evidence so that we can develop an idea of the context in which another person lives/lived. To help understand the Salem Witch Trials, we need to understand the Puritan beliefs of residents and what else was “in the air” at the time. In the classroom, it might be like this: We might provide a sermon where the minister hammers the message home: beware, the devil is everywhere. We might provide an excerpt from a book providing accounts of the devil terrorizing New Englanders. When we have these in mind, it makes it easier for us to step back and say, “I can see how someone living in that kind environment would think that way.”

What does this look like in the museum, with less time to spend with visitors, and a different set of resources?

(2) We need to reflect on our own positionality – what our views are, where they came from, how they might differ from others’. Not only do we discover things about ourselves, but we are more able to understand the perspectives of others.

So how might we promote empathy?

Some research has shown that encouraging people to imagine themselves in a position similar to another’s will help. Going with our Salem example, perhaps imagining a time when we felt pressures from around us to do and say what everyone else was thinking could help us understand similar dynamics in Salem. (Mendoza)

Some research has also shown that explicitly instructing people to empathize, encouraging them to question their assumptions, to really imagine themselves in another place and time, is more effective than saying “try to understand where this person is coming from.” (Galinsky)

The Tenement Museum provides context to all the family stories we share. On our living history programs, we take this one step further by giving visitors the directive to become a character from a different time period. The goal of this is not for them to become actors, but to help create an environment where empathy is fostered.

In this example, from our Meet Victoria program, visitors are given the role of Italian immigrants in the year 1916. During the first part of their tour they are given a variety of resources including images and historic records that provide context and help them get into character. As they become an immigrant family starting a new life in America, they take on a role analogous to Victoria’s experience. This role-play helps visitors to connect to Victoria and limits egocentric bias. By creating a scenario where they need Victoria’s advice and perspective, we invite visitors to see Victoria not as a stranger from the past, but as a contemporary – a view that will help to see the world from her perspective.

The first part of the program prepares visitors for the second part of the program: a visit with a costumed interpreter playing the role of Victoria Confino, a 14 year old that immigrated with her family from Kastoria in 1913. Giving the visitors context and a role analogous to Victoria helps them to leave their egocentric bias at the door, and leads to more quality interaction. The immersive and sensory experience of visiting with Victoria in her apartment helps visitors maintain their role. We have observed that in the majority of our programs this combination of preparation + role-play + immersive storytelling supports visitors in leave their egocentric bias behind.

One line of research compares “hot” and “cold” emotional states. A “hot” emotional state is one that is emotionally charged, e.g. fear, hunger, anger, thirst; a “cold” emotional state is the opposite. Studies have shown that when we ourselves are in a “cold” state, we have a hard time empathizing with or predicting what it is like to be in the opposite (i.e. “hot”) state. For instance: “People who are just about to exercise and are in a relatively neutral state predict that they would be less bothered by thirst if they were lost without food or water compared with people who have just exercised and are therefore relatively thirsty and warm” (study cited in Van Boven, Loewenstein, Dunning, & Nordgren, 2014).

The implication for museums is: When visitors are in a comfortable, climate-controlled museum, free from fear or cold or hunger, are they really able to grasp what it is like to be terrified or freezing or starving?

Participants in a study were asked to imagine being a student who was being punished by standing out in the cold without a jacket. The participants were divided into three groups. One third of participants were asked to stand out in the cold themselves. One third of participants were asked to keep their arm in a bucket of ice water. And one third of of participants were asked to keep their arm in a bucket of warm water.

Those who had their hands in ice water and those who stood out in the cold both made the same estimates about how uncomfortable the hypothetical student would feel. THAT IS, it didn’t matter if you were actually experiencing being in the cold or just having your arm in ice water. Just having a “sample” of the situation, having your arm in ice water, led people to empathize just as much as people who were experiencing the full situation first-hand by standing out in the cold!

In museums, if we want people to grasp the experience of another person, are these good strategies to try? For example, are there ways that we can encourage empathy in museums by giving people a small sample of what a situation would feel like for another person?

When visitors crowd into the small spaces of our exhibits, they can better relate to the crowding experienced by the residents that once lived there. Harris and Jennie Levine (pictured above) lived in this space in 1897 with their 2 children. They immigrated to New York City from Plonsk, Poland. At the time depicted, a very pregnant Jennie would share the area in front of the coal stove with a presser doing the ironing for her husband’s garment shop, which was located in the front room of the apartment. You can picture her tending to her toddler in the crib in the foreground, cooking his food on the stove, and working tirelessly to take care of her growing family. Immersing visitors in the details of Jennie’s experience while having them crowd into the small space she inhabited, helps them to empathize with her daily situation.

One participant in a study I am working on currently said that those who mined for gold during the California Gold Rush were “idiots,” because people often made more money providing goods and services to the miners. She had the benefit of hindsight and wasn’t empathizing with gold miners – she was quick to judge, not weighing the information that a miner actually would have had at the time or what a miner’s motivations may have actually been.

In museums, how can visitors be encouraged to be more thoughtful about what would people in different times may have been thinking, instead of being quick to judge?

Many visitors are appalled to discover residents used chamber pots as toilets and would throw the contents out of their windows. Upon hearing this, they express disgust explaining that people in the past were dirty, and commenting that they would never do that…

To counter this hindsight bias, Museum Educators offer a different way of seeing the chamber pot, helping visitors to imagine what it would have been like to have lived in 97 Orchard Street before there was running water and electricity. For example, s/he might prompt visitors to imagine they are living in a building where the only toilets are outside in the yard. There is no source of light so you must take the candle or kerosene lamp and carry it along with the chamber down four flights of narrow stairs. How will you stop it from spilling on the floor, or even worse on you? Now picture yourself in a long billowing skirt… With this background information and detail, visitors can understand that throwing the contents of the chamber pot out the window was actually the smart thing to do.

If we want people to empathize with others, it might make more sense to encourage them to try and remember how they felt the first time they encountered a stimulus, e.g. the annoying noise, and by encouraging them to look at how other people around them, who are experiencing the noise for the first time, are reacting.

In museums, is it possible to give visitors too much of a stimulus, e.g. too many upsetting images of people in danger (like in a Holocaust exhibit), such that they become desensitized and no longer empathize with the people in the images?

At the Tenement Museum the experience of crowding can lead to desensitization.

Initially, visitors are often surprised by how small the living spaces are. This can be followed by discomfort. However, after visiting a few spaces and surviving the experience, desensitization bias can leave them feeling like the space is not that bad after all. Of course, it is important to remember that the study of empathy is “tricky” as the session title denotes, and creating exhibits that will find the sweet spot where empathy is fostered is complex.

During the conference presentation, after sharing research findings and examples from the Tenement Museum, we opened up the floor for questions. There were a range of questions indicating that this is a topic colleagues have thought deeply about. For example, one attendee asked about empathy in relation to people perceived as good vs. those seen as bad. Another asked about the possibility of empathy not with people, but with the environment. The conversations continued well afterward, and we hope they continue even further.

Here are some of the resources cited during this presentation:

Campbell, T., O’Brien, E., Van Boven, L., Schwarz, N., & Ubel, P. (2014). Too much experience: A desensitization bias in emotional perspective taking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106 (2), 272.

Fischhoff, B., & Beyth, R. (1975). “I knew it would happen”: Remembered probabilities of once-future things. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 13 , 1-16.

Galinsky, A. D. (1999). Perspective taking: Debiasing social thought. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.

Galinsky, A. D., Ku, G., & Wang, C. S. (2005). Perspective-taking and self-other overlap: Fostering social bonds and facilitating social coordination. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 8 (2), 109-124.

Gehlbach, H. (2004). Social perspective taking: A facilitating aptitude for conflict resolution, historical empathy, and social studies achievement . Theory and Research in Social Education , 32 (1), 39-55.

Hunt, L. (2002). Against presentism. Perspectives, 40(5), 7-9.

Mendoza, R. J. (1997). Emotional versus situational inductions of empathy: Effects on interpersonal understanding and punitiveness . Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Nordgren, L. F., McDonnell, M. H. M., & Loewenstein, G. (2011). What constitutes torture? Psychological impediments to an objective evaluation of enhanced interrogation tactics. Psychological Science, 20 (10), 1-6.

Van Boven, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2005). Empathy gaps in emotional perspective taking. In B. F. Malle & S. D. Hodges (Eds.), Other minds: How humans bridge the divide between self and others (pp. 284-297).

Published by Rebecca Shulman

I have over 20 years of experience as a museum professional, working both within museums and as a consultant. Most recently I served as Founding Director of the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum, in Peoria, Illinois. Prior to that I worked as Head of Education at the Noguchi Museum, and Senior Manager of Learning Through Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. While at the Guggenheim Museum I wrote a book, Looking at Art in the Classroom. Learn more about Museum Questions, my consulting practice, at www.museumquestions.com. View more posts

8 thoughts on “ Exploring empathy: Research on a hot (but tricky) topic ”

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This is a such a timely and beautifully narrated article, and complex, yes. It made me think about each of the several visits to the local and international museums where I usually focus on exhibits and art, rather than the persons responsible for creating the objects or the socio-cultural context of the artefacts. I believe context is everything and typical signage is no longer enough to encourage the usual museum goers to delve into the context of an exhibit. The same applies to empathy. Taking the example of the Tenement Museum, if the same experiential tour was organized in India (where I live), the average visitor would actually experience disbelief that migrants would want to complain about the “cramped quarters,” because space is a premium here, most of the lower middle and poor people live in tiny, one-room spaces with big families, so while we would be able to have perspective about the situation, we wouldn’t empathize or necessarily feel sympathy. How would you recontextualize the exhibit, signage and experience for people from different walks of life without overtly using the ’empathy’ card?

Nilofar, I think the issue you raise about context is really important, because we often don’t truly understand the context of the people we are learning about. I am skeptical about the idea that 19th century immigrants thought those apartments were small. So when we are asking people to empathize, sometimes they simply end up misunderstanding.

Emily Skidmore (RK&A): I was completely fascinated by this (and appreciated that you shared it since I was not able to be at AAM). It made me think about the museum contexts in which this would work well and those where it might be more difficult. For example, communicating the effects of climate change came to mind. How, with an abstract scientific concept such as climate change, does one effectively foster empathy? I suppose this is similar to what the individual who asked you about fostering empathy for the environment (and by extension, animals, wildlife) was driving at. In history museums or historic houses, the goal is for visitors to empathize with other people (albeit of a different time and place) but what about other species? I think there are those of us who do empathize with the plight of other species because the underlying “hot” emotional states (related to survival) can be imagined as quite similar. In any case, thank you for a thought-provoking blog.

Emily, your comment reminded me of a recent This American Life episode about changing people’s minds – http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind . I didn’t get to listen to the first story in its entirety, but it basically seemed to be arguing that the way people change their minds is through connecting with a personal story. As soon as the people trying to do the convincing move away from the personal story, they lose their audience.

This is a splendidly provocative presentation and follow-up discussion. In my forthcoming book, Curating America: Museums as Storyscapes, I’ve been tracing the emergence of “historical empathy” as a goal of museum educators. I’ve come across a lovely article by two Canadian scholars, Jennifer Bonnell and Roger Simon. They offer this caution about the use of empathy: “Feelings are often offered as the royal road to promoting favorable understanding and solidarities across relations of difference. But as Freud suggests [in Civilization and Its Discontents], we might complicate this assumption and consider the possibility that the feelings evoked are not just evidence of the capacity for empathetic resonance, but also symptomatic of the fears and needs established within one’s own history, constituted as it is within structured relations of power, inequality, and subjection. The point here is not to dismiss the importance of empathy, but to re-conceptualize it as a capacity for reaching out to another’s experience in which our distinctive psycho-social history is maintained. Rather than presume a similarity of feelings, empathy thus reconceived becomes a relation of acknowledgement, a responsiveness to the feelings of others that opens the question of what it might mean to live in proximity to these feelings, to live in ways in which one experiences the force of these feelings to alter one’s experience of the world and actions in it. This acknowledgement of the other’s situation neither presupposes nor implies that one actually feels what the other feels. It is a process of being responsive to and reaching out toward another in which the other remains other, a process within which our distinctiveness as individual persons is not obliterated.” (“’Difficult Exhibitions and Intimate Encounters,” Museum and Society 5.2 (July 2007), 65-85, quotation at 76.)

Thank you for this comment! For those who are interested, I found a link to a copy of the article on line at https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/bonnellsimon.pdf

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Describe the role that individualism plays in oppression and privilege. What are the limitations of the individualistic perspective for understanding and eradicating oppression? Give specific examples from Johnson and any other sources you may use. The problems of oppression and privilege are interconnected and deep-rooted in our society. They play a role in who we are, how we behave, and the consequences that follow. So, what is privilege? Unlike meritocracy, privilege is not earned; it is merely given to the […]

Heroism Definition

Anyone can be a hero. A hero is someone who saves lives, speaks up, and supports others no matter what. Acts of heroism can range from a dog helping a drowning child, to a person saving an entire town. A hero doesn’t have to be someone that is famous or strong, making it difficult to identify what a true hero is. Many people are heroes, yet only a few get credit for it. Several acts of heroism can be found […]

Are Violent Video Games Good or Bad for You?

Critical Preface I had an ever so slightly difficult time constructing the stakeholder essay, not because I didn’t know what or how to talk about my topic, but because I had to try to be as unbiased as possible. I actually researched this topic during my freshman year of high school. When I reread the essay that I wrote, I felt that I could have done this topic more justice, so I decided to tackle it again for my stakeholder […]

What Makes a Good Movie

For the last century or so, cinema has been one of the most widely used forms of entertainment in society, with a myriad of films on stage every year with the same energy as popcorn kernels in a hot skillet. The ever-growing array of cinematic possibilities makes the process of choosing evening entertainment even more confusing, as many viewers use recommendations when choosing. Such recommendations may come from user-generated websites, critically published reviews, or platforms that combine the two. But […]

Honest Friend: Building Trust with People you Call Friends

All throughout elementary, middle, and high school we have all gained and lost friends but only one remained by your side. That someone is your best friend. Someone that’ll be there for you, believe in you and make you smile no matter what. Even though there are challenges and fights along the way, you guys get through them because the bond that was created is unbreakable. I shine at being a best friend because I experience and express empathy for […]

The Compassion for Kids

Have you ever seen someone who was doing so well and was so proud of something that they have achieved and then you get that sad feeling inside. That feeling is called compassion. In the story Marigolds, they live in a very poor, run down town. The kids are always bored so sometimes they go mess with old Ms. Lottie. In this old dirty town Ms. Lottie plants marigolds which brings her happiness. One day they decide to go destroy […]

A Case of Jake’s Anxiety

Starting from a cognitive psychologist, rather than looking deeply for the answer in Jake's environment, they would be focused more on his mind and how he views himself, and even how he speaks about himself on a day to day basis. With anxiety being the problem they are focused on, a cognitive therapist would look to how Jake speaks about himself, and the expectations he has for himself as well as if he believes he can meet those expectations. Changing […]

Controlling myself and my Emotions

The scholar Howard Gardener states that there are multiple intelligences. “He described an individual’s cognitive abilities in terms of seven relatively independent but interacting intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal.” (IJCRSEE, 2016) The academic John Dewey, focuses more on intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences. Interpersonal refers to the understanding and the act of relating to other people, while Intrapersonal refers to introspection and self-reflection. Dewey believed that the human being has to interact with what surrounds him in […]

Emotional Development in Children

Emotional development is a complex process beginning in childhood and continuing into adulthood. Joy, anger, sadness, fear and surprise are the first emotions that can be recognized in babies. Later, as children develop a sense of self, more complex emotions emerge, such as jealousy, empathy, embarrassment, pride, shame, and guilt. This sense of self and the emotional capacity it produces generally occurs at some point after 18 months of age (Santrock, 2016). There are many things that influence the way […]

Relationships Becoming Robotic

Friendships used to consist of witty conversations in a coffee shop. Family get-togethers used to be full of spending time catching up on each other’s lives. Going out to lunch with your parent used to consist of conversation where the words came from the heart. Then the internet and mobile devices were born. In the discussion of the effects of the internet and mobile devices on humanity, one controversial issue has been whether or not the internet and mobile devices […]

King Lear is Speaking to Kent about the Storm

"King Lear is speaking to Kent about the storm that does not disturb him because even though the storm is horrible, In association on the pain forced against him by his daughter. The storm description elaborates Lear’s misery by portraying how the internal agony surpasses the temporary distress in Lear’s subconscious as he recognizes how his pride led to his complete denial and desperate situation. Lear then presents an analogy, by illustrating a situation if a bear were to strike […]

The Trending Battle Royale Video Game Fortnite

In today's society there is a lot of violence that is broadcast through many forms of media. There are violent video games, movies and even real life violence on the news and internet videos. Due to this over exposure of violence people are being desensitized to it. We tend to normalize things when we are exposed to it on a daily basis. The same thing happens with violence, being over exposed to it can cause people to become numb to […]

The Immorality of Book Banning

Through the years the process of stopping people from reading certain ideologies in books has changed from burning every found copy to banning them from public and school libraries, or at least trying to (Palmer). A book can be ‘challenged’ which means a complaint about it has been made and it is asked to be taken off the shelves, if the challenge succeeds that means the book has been banned (Bird). Frequently banned books tend to be the ones that […]

Defining Altruism Issue

In current society, it can be justified that the level of autonomy directly influences the amount of altruism an autistic adolescent implements. Defining Altruism: When it comes to the comprehension of socialization within the development of behaviors in adolescents, altruism is vital. Although there is no true altruism, more or less altruism can be determined based upon the involuntary actions and behaviors of an individual. In the absence of motivation, altruism cannot transpire. An altruist must have the inherent belief […]

Relationship Improvement: Effective Communication Program

This paper discusses a 10-week program that was designed to improve my wife's and my ability to effectively communicate. We hypothesized that our ability to communicate more effectively would improve the overall quality of our relationship. Throughout this program, we focused on increasing our communication, active listening, self-disclosure, non-verbal communication, and effective communication during conflict. The results support our hypothesis and the research used to develop it. About a month after getting married, I found myself enrolled in this Quality […]

Consider the Lobster Analysis

David Foster Wallace's 2004 article "Think about the Lobster," initially distributed in Gourmet magazine, explores a point, not for the most part covered by such distributions—the vibes of one of the creatures who turn into our food. Wallace, an American writer, author, and English educator, names himself as perusers' "allowed reporter" of the 56th Annual Maine Lobster Festival (236). Bragging 25,000 pounds new got lobster, cooking rivalries, thrill rides, unrecorded music, and a wonderful show, the MLF draws 100,000 guests […]

Societies where Inequality is Dominant

A study revealed that in societies where inequality is dominant, people from lower classes behave more prosocially than people from higher classes, especially when that behavior does not occur in public, with others to observe it (Manstead, 2018). Another study found various mixed results concerning whether family income and socioeconomic status affect a child's gender role attitude. This main study conducted numerous surveys and found some surveys revealed that this factor is not significant in predicting gender egalitarianism in children. […]

Beyond the Individual’s Effects

Over the past couple years, researchers have declared the public awareness for the negative effects of child abuse by their parents which this factor plays an important role in the development of the child's future. Abuse and neglect damage the psychological and mental health aspects of children who might suffer from these types of trauma during their childhood. There are numerous signs commonly associated with child abuse and neglect that mainly comes from the parents and the people who they […]

The Evolution of Anti-Social Behavior in a Cooperative Species

Humans and primates have evolved to be highly social species who tend to live in groups. Being social is evolutionarily beneficial, meaning it has benefits for both reproductive and survival reasons (PBS 2001, Dunbar 1998). Human and primate social networks are very complicated and require a lot of cognitive and empathetic skills to be able to function in these species' social groups. The social brain hypothesis, first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, explains the increase in neocortex size as […]

Essays on Empathy

Experts in this subject field are ready to write an original essay following your instructions to the dot!

Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Adolescent Siblings of Physically Disabled Children

The study focuses on the apparent psychological benefits of interaction with siblings with impairments who are part of t...

Effective empathy

Effective empathy is concerned with one's emotional reaction to another's emotional state. Cognitive empathy refers to o...

The Emphatic Listening Scenario

When listening to someone else, empathic listening is understanding their meaning, feelings, thoughts, and entire experi...

Emotional intelligence Explained

An individual's capacity to control their emotions when interacting with others is referred to as emotional intelligence...

Relationship Marketing and empathy

In the modern world, business competition is fierce. To ensure longevity and the achievement of predefined outcomes, the...

What is Pay It Forward?

The phrase Pay It Forward describes a type of generosity that has been practiced for thousands of years. It describes a person who has been the ...

The Facebook Generation

The essay by Alice Mathias entitled The Facebook Generation is a critique in which the author provides her view on the r...

Emotion and Reason

Essential phenomena in human growth, existence, and psychology are the objects of reason, thought, irrationality, and vo...

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Emotion / Empathy

Empathy Essay Examples

Building empathy with communicating with others.

Why is empathy such an important role in communication? Why is it so hard to show empathy for someone facing a situation you never experienced? Does complex thinking effect empathy in way or are they different when communicating? What is the difference between sympathy and...

The Essence of Good Character

Good character is a fundamental aspect of human nature that shapes our interactions, decisions, and overall demeanor. It goes beyond external appearances and delves into the qualities that define our moral and ethical integrity. While the concept of good character may vary across cultures and...

The Power of Small Acts: Exploring the Importance of Kindness

There are different emotions and feeling that people like to see in other people. It is huge list but today we are focusing one of the main one which is kindness. We can pretty much say Kindness is one of the most important human qualities....

Empathy in a Moral System

Frequently morality and empathy are used interchangeably in both formal and informal conversation. This suggests that the two are so closely related that it is a common mistake to confuse the two. Additionally, it is accepted that empathy plays a foundational role in morality. The...

Understanding the Concept of Empathy

Hoffman (1984) defined empathy as the “cognitive awareness of another person’s internal states (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, intentions) and the vicarious affective response to another person” (p. 103). This definition explains empathy as a multidimensional construct referring to it as a cognitive phenomenon, while also recognising...

Good Country People with Emphathy

An individual who is to be considered as a good country person is one who is empathic – one who thinks of other people’s feelings and is able to put themselves in the shoes of their counterparts in certain situations. Also, to be a good...

The Role of Empathy in Medical Profession

“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only empathy is hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place”, an exceptional quote by Daniel H. Pink. With...

Empathy Expressed Through Jamaica Kincaid’s Poem

Throughout the story “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” Ernest Hemingway shows how the concept of “loneliness” is displayed throughout the entire story. This suggests that the people who seem rich and happy will eventually have some of the darkest times in their life. The story “Girl”...

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

What is empathy? “Empathy means to recognize others’ feelings, the causes of these feelings, and to be able to participate in the emotional experience of an individual without becoming part of it” (Ioannidou & Konstantikaki, 2008). Many people confuse sympathy with empathy, but they are...

The Relationship Between Prosocial Behavior and Animal Attitudes in a South African and Non-south African Population

The relationship established between prosocial behaviour and animal attitudes is one considered quite complex and contradictory. The goal of the study was to determine the relationship between prosocial behaviour and animal attitudes in a South African and non-South African population. A sample of 71 students...

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About Empathy

Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

Renowned psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have identified three components of empathy: Cognitive, Emotional and Compassionate.

Affective and cognitive empathy influence, and are influenced by, biological systems and processes that contribute to everyday feelings, thoughts, beliefs, decisions, and behavior. Empathetic feelings might enable individuals to develop more satisfactory interpersonal relations, especially in the long-term. Empathy-induced altruism can improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups, and to improve racial attitudes, and actions toward people with AIDS, the homeless, and convicts.

Painkillers reduce one’s capacity for empathy. Observation of another human being experiencing emotions lights up the same neurons in our brain as if we're experiencing the same feeling. Empathy exists because we know we’ve got only one life to live. Painkillers Reduce Your Capacity For Empathy Meditation May Heighten Empathy.

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