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Empathy is awareness of the thoughts, feelings, or
states of mind of others. When we see another human or animal experiencing
something positive or negative, we instinctively identify with the other. One
must be careful not to confuse empathy with sympathy (sympathy exists when the
feelings or emotions of one person give rise to similar feelings in another
person, creating a state of shared feeling).
Empathy has to be learned at a young age. Not all humans have empathy: the
lacking of all forms of empathy is called psychopathy (see also antisocial
personality disorder). Autism and Asperger's syndrome are often falsely
associated with empathy disorders, due to developmental differences in the
ways emotions are experienced and expressed.
Research in neurology has shown that the same groups of neurons fire in one's
brain when one, say, pricks one's finger as when one sees someone else do the
same. Hence the reason why one might wince when one sees someone else do this.
There are also reports of small infants only a few weeks old who will stick
their tongue out at you when you do that to them, giving rise to the theory
that empathy is innate in higher mammals.
It has been speculated that empathy may lie behind the prevalence of the
Golden rule, and by extension that it may be an essential part of the cause of
moral and social behaviour in human and non-human animals.
The empathy reflex is exploited to a certain extent in all kinds of fiction,
thus we may identify deeply with characters appearing in a text or on a
screen. It is also possible to identify with a person of the other sex or an
animal. Empathy is thought to be a driving psychological force behind the
animal rights movement.
Some students of animal behaviour claim that empathy is not restricted to
humans as the definition implies. Examples include dolphins saving humans from
drowning or from shark attacks, and a multitude of behaviours observed in
primates, both in captivity and in the wild. See, for instance, the popular
book The Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans de Waal.
In some works of science fiction and fantasy, empathy is understood to be a
paranormal or psychic ability to sense the emotions of others, as opposed to
telepathy, which allows one to perceive thoughts as well. A person who has
that ability is called an empath.
Source:
Wikipedia.org
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