Sympathy
Sympathy is a social affinity in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings. Also known as empathic concern, it is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Although empathy and sympathy are often used interchangeably the two terms have distinct origins and meanings. Sympathy has been defined as a person's awareness of the feelings of another, but not absorption in the feelings themselves. [1] This definition accords with the traditional definition of the term, which entered English nearly three centuries ago via Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. [2] Hume's work set forth the logic of sympathy that entered the social sciences [3] where sympathy is conceived as "an emotional response stemming from another's emotional state or condition that is not identical to the others emotion, but consists of feelings of sorrow or concern for another welfare." [4]
In common usage, sympathy is usually making known one's understanding of another's unhappiness or suffering, especially when it is grief. Sympathy can also refer to being aware of other (positive) emotions as well. In a broader sense, it can refer to the sharing of political or ideological sentiments, such as in the phrase "a communist sympathizer". The word derives from the Greek συμπάθεια (sympatheia),[5] from σύν (syn) "together" and πάθος (pathos) "passion", in this case "suffering" (from πάσχω - pascho, "to be affected by, to suffer").
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[edit] Differences with empathy
"Empathy" is the more recent term in English, entering the vocabulary only in the last century. The credit for translation into English goes to Edward Bradford Titchener [6] who in 1909 coined the word empathy to express the difference between Einfühlung (in-feeling) and Mitgefühl (with-feeling) [7] which was already in the English lexicon as sympathy [8] While sympathy is a heightened awareness of another person's state of mind and his or her circumstances stemming from recognition of his or her feelings [9] empathy refers to a person's capacity to feel within or in another person's feelings [10] and most researchers now consider it "an emotional response that stems from another's emotional state or condition and that is congruent with the other's emotional state or situation" [11]
[edit] Sympathy and decision making
Although sympathy is a well-known term, the implications of sympathy found in the study of human behavior are often less clear. Decision making, an integral part of human behavior, involves the weighing costs with potential outcomes. Sympathy provides a means of understanding another person's experience or situation, good or bad, with a focus on their individual well-being. [12] With a closer examination, researchers have found that several factors contribute to sympathy development, including novel experiences and how close, both emotionally and geographically, a person or experience is. [13]
[edit] Sympathy and children
Infants and children are particularly good at eliciting sympathy from adults, due to humans' instinctive need to care for and protect children. Babies seeking care or attention will often "pout", sticking out their lips and making pitiful crying sounds to elicit sympathy. Additionally, many charitable organizations focus their efforts on children. Even charitable organizations that serve both adults and children will often display pictures and videos of children in pitiful situations because this is an effective way to evoke sympathy in donors.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Deighton, John and Stephen J. Hoch (1993), "Teaching Emotion with Drama Advertising," in Advertising Exposure, Memory, and Choice, ed. Andrew A. Mitchell, Hiilsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 261-282.
- ^ Stern B and Escalas J: Sympathy and Empathy: Emotional Responses to Advertising Dramas Journal of consumer research Vol, 29 2003
- ^ Mercer, Philip (1972), Sympathy and Ethics: A Study of the relationship between Sympathy and Morality with Special Reference to Hume's Treatise, Oxford: Clarendon.
- ^ Eisenberg, Nancy and Paul A. Miller (1987), "Empathy, Sympathy, and Altruism: Empirical and Conceptual Links," in Empathy and Its Development, ed. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 292-316.
- ^ Sympatheia, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus
- ^ Titchener, Edward Bradford (1909a), Elementary Psychology of the Thought Processes, New York: Macmillan. (1909b), A Text Book of Psychology, New York: Macmillan.
- ^ Vischer, Robert ([1873] 1994), "On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics," in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893, ed. and trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 98-173.
- ^ Wispe, Lauren (1986), "The Distinction between Sympathy and Empathy: To Call Forth a Concept, a Word Is Needed," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50 (August), 314-321. (1987), "History of the Concept of Empathy," in Empathy and Its Development, ed. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17-37.
- ^ Mercer, Philip (1972), Sympathy and Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between Sympathy and Morality with Special Reference to Hume's Treatise, Oxford: Clarendon.
- ^ Langfeld, Herbert Sidney ([1920] 1967), The Aesthetic Attitude, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat.
- ^ Eisenberg, Nancy and Janet Strayer (1987), "Critical Issues in the Study of Empathy," in Empathy and Its Development, ed. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-16.
- ^ Clark, Arthur J. (2010). "Empathy and Sympathy: Therapeutic Distinctions in Counseling". Journal of Mental Health Counseling 32 (2): 95-101.
- ^ Loewenstein, George; Small, Deborah A. (2007). "The Scarecrow and the Tin Man: The Vicissitudes of Human Sympathy and Caring". Review of General Psychology 11 (2). doi:10.1037/1089-2680.11.2.112.
[edit] Further reading
- Decety, J. and Ickes, W. (Eds.) (2009). The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT Press, Cambridge.
- Decety, J. and Batson, C.D. (Eds.) (2007). Interpersonal Sensitivity: Entering Others' Worlds. Hove: Psychology Press.
- Eisenberg, N., & Strayer, J. (1987). Empathy and its Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Lamm, C., Batson, C.D., & Decety, J. (2007). The neural substrate of human empathy: effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 42-58.
[edit] External links
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Look up sympathy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sympathy |
- Mirrored emotion by Jean Decety from the University of Chicago.
- Sympathy Message Samples Examples of sympathy messages to say and write for every situation.
- Sympathy messages Provides information on writing sympathy messages with examples.
- Sympathy Message Examples Examples of sympathy messages to say or write.
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