I have a genuine question
I was looking through #low empathy and saw several posts by autists who pointed towards the difference between ‘cognitive empathy’ and ‘affective empathy’ – some stating autists struggle with cognitive empathy, others stating autists generally struggle with affective empathy
My first language is German (so the definitions in my mind may differ) and I also recall that info graphic about how “caring for someone” is made up of empathy, sympathy, compassion
As far as I am aware ‘recognising and understanding another’s perspective an feelings without experiencing the same emotions’ is sympathy
While ‘feeling alongside someone who is emoting, sharing the same emotions they feel/display’ is empathy
ETA: I looked up the Merriam-Webster definitions – which look to be the exact reverse of what I know from German
Sympathy – an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other; the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another; inclination to think or feel alike
Empathy – 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
Sympathy and empathy are closely related words, bound by shared origins and the similar circumstances in which each is applicable, yet they are not synonymous. For one thing, sympathy is considerably older than empathy, having existed in our language for several hundred years before its cousin was introduced, and its greater age is reflected in a wider breadth of meaning. Sympathy may refer to "feelings of loyalty" or "unity or harmony in action or effect," meanings not shared by empathy. In the contexts where the two words do overlap, sympathy implies sharing (or having the capacity to share) the feelings of another, while empathy tends to be used to mean imagining, or having the capacity to imagine, feelings that one does not actually have.
But according to the ‘cognitive empathy’ & ‘affective empathy’ divide the first one would be cognitive empathy rather than sympathy and the second one would be affective empathy
And I can not find a source that actually compares sympathy to both kinds of empathy described
It’s always either ‘sympathy vs empathy’ or ‘cognitive empathy vs affective empathy’
I would like to understand this better
The problem here is that there are colloquial definitions, like in the dictionary, and then there are research definitions, and when it comes to research on autism you need to use the research definitions. But then there’s a second issue where empathy researchers can’t always agree on the same definition (and I know because I am one). So I’m going to give you the most agreed-upon definitions.
Affective empathy is shared feeling of emotion or sensation. If I ’m hammering a nail and accidentally hit my thumb instead, and you flinch, get a sudden lurch in your stomach, etc., then you’re experiencing affective empathy. It’s often automatic and shared - we partially mimic what the other person is feeling and we feel a bit of it ourselves. This can also be true for things other than physical pain, too, like if I’m crying and you feel a flash of that sadness.
Cognitive empathy involves taking people’s perspective (physically as well as figuratively) and understanding the complexities of why someone may be feeling or thinking something. If I’m looking at a photo of an elderly woman and crying, it involves cognitive empathy for you to decode that and understand that I probably know the woman and something bad must have happened to her. You need to put together clues about my facial expression, body language, context of my age the age of the woman in the photo, whether we look similar, etc., and you might come to the conclusion that she is my grandmother and she may be sick or have recently died, and I’m sad about losing her. You can understand all that without sharing in what I’m feeling, though.
If you do piece together I’m sad because my grandmother recently died, and then you feel some of my sadness too, then you have utilized both cognitive and affective empathy. And if you feel like you want to comfort me because you’ve understood my emotional state, then you’re experiencing compassion (often called empathic concern in the research).
Research on people with autism shows they are more likely to have deficits in cognitive empathy, because it involves understanding complex social cues. However, they DON’T usually have affective empathy deficits.
In the grandmother scenario, a person with autism (keeping in mind it’s a spectrum and there’s a ton of variation), may not understand why I’m sad, but may recognize sadness in my facial expression and feel a small portion of my sadness. Or they may not share in that sadness unless they are able to decode the situation or have it decoded for them. Or they may experience compassion in that they recognize that something is wrong and they care for me and don’t want me to be sad, without necessarily needing all the context. Or they could have no problems with any of it! Like I said, it’s a spectrum.
And as for sympathy? Well sometimes researchers use it to mean the most basic kind of affective empathy, where you’re feeling what someone else is feeling. Brene Brown tried to convince the world it means pity without empathy. Basically when it comes to the research it’s a useless concept because no one can agree on what it means. I know that’s a very unsatisfying answer!
Also since this is a touchy topic I want to point out that you can care for other people and do things to help them without relying on either cognitive OR affective empathy. Empathy is one path toward helping others, but it is not the only path. Empathy can also be used for harm, so having or not having it shouldn’t be equated with morality.
Sorry this is long! I literally wrote my dissertation on empathy, so I have a lot to say about it lol
