Empathy: Heredity and Environmental Effects on an Individual’s Life

Empathy and caring is an essential part of human health. We love because we can empathize (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). Empathy underlies everything that makes society work; such as altruism, collaboration, love and charity. Failures to empathize are a key part of social problems, such as crime, violence, war, racism, child abuse and inequity. Although we are genetically predisposed to care for others, the development of empathy requires a lifelong process of relational interaction (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). More importantly, the first relationship humans experience, the

What is emotional intelligence? EI is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically; thus, compared to Daniel Goleman's definition to emotional intelligence are very similar just in more detail.

From close family, to friends, to acquaintances, to teachers, it is something that is important and critical that I am considerate of others feelings. An example of empathy in my life is between my sister and I. My sister, Zoe and I have a great relationship, she is my very best friend. But, she is an extremely busy best friend! Her being a senior, she has a large amount of work to do! She works at her job, works on her Odyssey, applies for colleges, does homework, finds herself vegan meals, drives me places, the list could go on! At times I make the mistake of not giving her the empathy she deserves because I can get upset about her not spending enough time with me. It is a selfish action when I do that, and have to continue to learn and understand she has work to get done, and friends to spend time with as well. Lately, I’ve been working hard on not giving her a hard time and really putting myself in her shoes. I imagined myself in her shoes and visioned a chaotic mess! I’m proud she is handling the stress so well, and maintaining a good relationship with me, her friends, and herself. It’s important I am empathetic of her situation in life right now, and spend the time I can get with her happily, because soon she’s off the college. Empathy plays a huge role of my friendships and relationships. My dad always enjoys to remind me how proud he is of

Empathy, the ability to recognize and share feelings of others, has been in our brains since the beginning of time. It was discovered by the Greeks which they called it, “Empatheia” meaning, “In feeling.” Then a German psychologist Vischer in 1837 and he called it

How can empathy help people to be better, or to mature over the course of time? In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the book starts in Alabama during the time of the Great Depression. Atticus Finch and his children, Jem and Scout, live in Maycomb. Atticus takes a case about an African-American male, but he ends up not winning the case. Jem is frustrated and does not understand why he lost. There is a Halloween pageant and Jem is asked to take Scout to it. After the pageant is over, Scout and Jem are walking home when someone attacks them. Jem is knocked out and the person then goes for Scout but someone saves them. They later find out that the person was Boo Radley, who is a shy man. My current event is about

have deep and meaningful relationships with others when we don't have empathy. Without empathy, we

“The Baby in the Well” is a useful source to get information about empathy and how it has impacted

During English class we talked about empathy and how in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout showed empathy to her brother, Jem when he was moody and silent. Scout showed a great deal of maturity at the age of seven when she was empathetic to her brother. Many people nowadays have trouble showing empathy for others around them. Empathy is the ability to not only detect feelings of other people but also experience the emotion yourself. Empathy can be both a blessing and nuisance. If a person can read someone else’s emotions they can help and understand them, it will be easier to connect with that person. But empathetic people may end up experiencing the negative feelings and emotion around them which can be a major problem for some people.

The fundamental empathy that all people innately have transcends

Emotional intelligence (EI) or emotional quotient (EQ) is the ability…or capacity of individuals to realize their own emotions and the emotions of those around them to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior appropriately.

The ability to express and control our own emotions is important, but so is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. Psychologists refer to this ability as emotional intelligence. According to the Cambridge Dictionary online, Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate

Reevy (2010) hypothesized that there are five ways in which people demonstrate empathy. The first three are described as “primitive,” meaning they happen automatically, and include mimicry (copying someone else’s facial expressions and body movements), conditioning (feeling and showing the same emotions as someone else), and direct association (recalling when a similar situation happened to themselves). The last two are learned and require some practice. They include verbally mediated association (by reading or hearing something, one can visualize and feel the situation), and perspective taking (putting oneself in another person’s shoes) (Reevy, 2010). Additionally, Bruneau (2009) describes the three types of empathy as interactive (focused

Growing up, I had a strong sense of empathy, being able to make connections with my

Empathy has been suggested to be a multi-dimensional psychological process (Zaki & Ochsner, 2012) that involves related, yet separate, cognitive and affective empathetic systems such as affective sharing, perspective-taking, and cognitive appraisal (Hein & Singer, 2008; Lamm et al., 2007; Olsson & Ochsner, 2008). These empathetic processes rely on both bottom-up and top-down processes, where the former is stimuli driven (e.g., observing facial expressions), and the latter includes the observer’s knowledge, experiences, and beliefs about the observed state (Goubert et al., 2005). Two main components of empathy have been proposed: affective empathy (AE) and cognitive empathy (CE) (e.g., Decety & Meyer, 2008; Fan et al., 2011; Mathur, Harada, Lipke, & Chiao, 2010). AE is said to be the most basic form of empathy and is most commonly known as empathic concern (Preston & de Waal, 2002). It refers to the indirect sharing of another’s emotional state, though not necessarily identical (Smith, 2006); and is also a response involving emotion recognition skills and emotional reactivity (Tone & Tully, 2014). Affective empathetic responses have been found to be an automatic, instinctive, and unconscious process (Belzung, 2014; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Dimberg & Thunberg, 1998; Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed, 2000; Han, Fan, & Mao, 2008). On the other hand, CE is seen to be a more complex form of empathy (Shamay-Tsoory, Aharon-Peretz, & Perry, 2009). It refers to the mental capacity to

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been defined as the focus on such competencies as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management (Goleman, 2006, p. 16). It is the ability of the leader to manage emotion both in