The Depth And Complexity Of Empathy

It has been observed that mirror neurons are active when a person feels an emotion or witnesses another person expressing emotion, which could explain the feeling of empathy.

In his book, Albrecht introduces the empathy model developed by Dr. George Thompson, to further explain and build on the concept of Empathy, as a part of our social intelligence. Dr. Thompson, who Albrecht described as a Renaissance man, wrote several books, created a series of seminars, and started an institute based on concepts of communication that he calls, “Verbal Judo.”

The overall purpose of this article is to show how empathy and emotional experiences are linked. This article also gives various theories and ideas by world renowned psychologists. The theme of this article is how much empathy we have toward others in social experiences. A few new ideas and purposes of this article were when they talked about all the different Theories based on appraisal and empathy in certain situations. It’s really important to publicize these ideas because for one this stuff is very interesting, it could help others discover new approaches to situations, and it would very well help people themselves deal with empathy.

What is empathy you may be wondering, well empathy is the way you can understand what another person if feeling or going through. Empathy means a lot to me. If someone doesn’t have empathy I usually want nothing to do with them because empathy is what makes you a nice and caring person. Here is an example of two students showing empathy towards each other: Suppose a friend of yours is complaining of feeling exhausted after having pulled an overnighter studying for an exam. Out of your own experience, you know what that feels like, you have empathy with his tiredness, and may be able to suggest something that you've done in the past that may help your friend.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, empathy is the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it. In simpler words, it’s feeling what someone or someone else feels. The example used from the text that I found to be interesting was when Bogart explained the misunderstandings between herself and her mother. She claimed that they were once close when she was a child and as time went on and her mother began dying, their relationship had gotten better. I believe this had to due with the fact that they had similar interests. When Bogart was offered a teaching job at her mother’s alma mater, her mother showed great interest in the life that was of her daughter’s. Bogart

The discovery of mirror neurons remains extremely influential within neuroscience, specifically their role in higher-level cognitive empathic functions (Haker, Kawohl, Herwig, & Rossler, 2013). Previous research shows that mirror neurons activate when an action is both performed and observed. Additionally, this phenomenon transfers to emotional responses, showing activation when experiencing an emotion or observing it in other people (e.g. facial expressions, yawning, etc.) (Rizoolatti, Fogass, & Gallese, 2006). Associations also exist between unconscious mimicry (the chameleon effect) and the mirror neuron systems, showing the extent of these mechanisms (Iacoboni, 2009).

Mirror neurons contribute to feelings of empathy because when we see someone experiencing something we have experience, the same cells are firing that fired during our experience which allows us to actually “feel” what they are feeling. Mirror neurons allow us to

Tamar and Ford found conducted their experiments using 162 undergraduate college students, but excluded 10 of the participants for their inability to follow directions. The study consisted of 49 males and 103 females. The median age of the participants was 23 years. The participants were selected from a diverse group of self-reported ethnicities. The participants were shown video clips of sad or happy clients, and were asked to evaluate the emotional state of the people in the video clips. The video clips consisted of extreme cases of “sad and happy” states, such as a person describing the death of their grandmother or a mother describing the birth of her child. The participants were instructed to take three different approaches. First approach, to dissociate with the people from the video clip by imagining they were in a movie theater and they were able to observe the physical surroundings, essentially observing from the third person. Second approach, consisted of “reflection” which consisted of examining the people in the video and attempt to figure out what the person is experiencing. Additionally, the participants were asked to attempt to understand what effect the video clip is having on them, and to take a positive, nonjudgmental approach. Third approach, consisted of “empathy imagery” consisted on the participants attempting to mentally place themselves in the situation. In this approach the

Empathy is the act of understanding and sharing one’s feelings with another person. Furthermore, people do

My parents always talk about how I was a really mean kid. I think the reason for this was because I really didn’t care how others felt. As I grew older I developed empathy. I can look back on my life and see a correlation with the amount of reading I completed, and the the expansion of my empathy. Empathy is important because it helps you connect with people, and it helps you understand people’s motives. As a teacher knowing these things helps because I interact with people everyday in both my personal and professional life.

During my sophomore year of high school, I broke my leg playing football. I had called my coach on the way home from the doctor’s office to tell him. After talking to a few of my friends on the team, I received a flood of texts from the rest of my teammates. One of the seniors, Mike, talked to me about he broke his leg his freshman year. He supported me through telling his story, and that despite his injury he was still able to earn a scholarship from the University of Pittsburgh. While it couldn’t have been difficult for him to put himself in my shoes, his encouragement was meaningful to me. I only knew him for a year, and he took time out of his Friday night while he was probably exhausted, or at a bare minimum had better things to do with

Empathy or the capability to comprehend and share the feelings and emotions of another is seen as a positive characteristic for an individual to hold (Guadagni, Burles, Ferrara & Iaria, 2014). Empathy is said to present itself as two types; cognitive and emotional (Blanke, Rauers, Riediger, 2016). Cognitive empathy refers to a person 's ability to recognize another 's emotions while emotional empathy refers to an individual’s ability to resonate with those emotions (Blanke, Rauers, Riediger, 2016). Sleep

Empathy is a quality everyone should posses. This trait provides an understanding of human emotion. Without it, how would we be able to communicate with one another, or cry when you read a poem that touches your soul? How would we be able to function as the human beings we are today?

Empathy plays a huge role in individuality. “Our strongly developed sense of individuality - or being a personal self, or ego - can make it difficult for us to experience this state of connection” stated in the psychology today article. For instance, someone can be a victim of a brutal mug our instincts of empathy kick in and you feel bad for that person. Empathy allows us to feel for a person who is going through it allows us to be distinctly different from one another.

Martin Hoffman’s theory of empathy includes information that cognitive development is directly related to the development of empathy (Johansson, 2008, pg. 36). As children grow and interact with others, levels of empathy become evident. Hoffman suggests that there are four levels of empathy in children: