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.
What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
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Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#22Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#23Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#24Listen to this article (5min) at https://playtext.app/doc/clggowx2f0002jp0fal6qzpbu
Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#25I 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.
Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#26I 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.
Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#27Huh. 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.
Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#2812 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."
They'll find out it's really not, when they inevitably meet a foolish highly-intelligent person doing unwise things...
Yep, that's probably why PP said 12 year old. Teen years are full of opportunities to learn this difference. There's no shortage of intelligent morons at 15 ;-)
Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#29This 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 t…
Sympathy literally means "feeling together".
The definition of sympathy from the article doesn't rhyme with symbiosis [1] or symphony [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony#Etymology_and_origins
Re: What's the Difference Between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion?
#30There'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."