Empathy is the ability to understand what other people are feeling and to internalize the situation by looking at it from their perspective and putting oneself in their shoes. The ability to empathize is important because it improves the quality of relationships and makes people feel understood. This reduces miscommunication. It makes it harder to react aggressively and can help one to be more objective. It helps to identify feelings and makes it easier to regulate them.
Subjective Reality Provides Different Meanings
Despite its benefits to communication and the individual, empathy cannot guarantee that one will understand another correctly. Every human mind is subjective and contains its own unique schemas. Different cultures, age groups, and experiences create different inner worlds. The human mind contains its own biases. How difficult an event is depends more on the meaning the person attaches to it than on the event itself. That is why “everyone’s problem is their own” is a psychologically understandable expression. Even very similar events evoke different feelings in people. A situation that is seen as success by one person may be failure by another. Furthermore, the learning factor can make the reaction stronger or weaker.
Attachment patterns also provide different meanings. For example, an event may be perceived as more threatening by someone who is sensitive to abandonment. Self-concept and personal values shape our inner world and guide our ability to understand. In short, it is not the event but the meaning that determines the emotion.
What Are The Components Of Empathy?
Even though empathy is seen in everyday language as understanding the other person, it is not a single skill. It consists of several processes that complement each other but produce different results. Feeling empathetic does not always mean understanding correctly; even if a person understands correctly, they may still find it difficult to help. Therefore, empathy should not be considered as a whole.
Empathy can be divided into:
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Cognitive empathy (the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and mental processes)
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Emotional empathy (internalizing another person’s feelings and experiencing the same emotion)
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Somatic empathy (physically feeling the emotional experience of another person)
However, defining empathy solely in terms of varieties is insufficient to explain how it functions in interpersonal relationships and where it can break down. It is important to approach empathy as a process.
First, emotional cues are noticed. Cues such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language provide a foundation, but misunderstandings can occur at this stage. Cues may be ambiguous, or we may filter them according to our own schemas.
Then the process of meaning-making begins, and a mental model is established; that is, a cognitive inference is made. The answer to the “why” question begins to form, and predictions are produced. This is where the margin of error is high, and we fill in the gaps with our own schemas. Egocentric inference plays a role here. When trying to understand another person’s inner world, egocentric inference refers to using one’s own experience as a starting point. The mind wants to fill in the gaps quickly. Therefore, mistakes can easily occur.
The third stage is the emotional and somatic resonance stage. The person emotionally accompanies the other person’s feelings; sometimes this accompaniment is also felt at the bodily level. The anxiety felt by the other person may cause physical reactions in the individual, such as sweating or an increased heart rate. However, there is an important distinction here: emotional or physical empathy does not indicate that the individual has understood the other person correctly; it only indicates that the individual is affected and connected.
The fourth stage is behavior. That is, it is no longer about feeling and understanding, but about expressing. One can offer suggestions, hug, ask questions, or avoid the situation. Understanding correctly does not necessarily lead to the right response. Sometimes suggestions may be persistently offered to a person who simply seeks attention, or dismissive language may be used unintentionally. The effectiveness of empathy depends not only on intention but also on whether the empathetic response meets the other person’s needs.
How Is Correct Meaning Derived?
Empathetic assessments are often based on inferences made under uncertainty; therefore, the feeling of “I understand” does not automatically guarantee the accuracy of the interpretation. At this point, epistemic humility means accepting the limits of one’s own knowledge and not absolutizing the interpretation one produces.
Correct understanding requires testing the empathic interpretation through communicative verification. The person reflects the emotion and meaning they perceive back to the other party, then checks it with clarifying questions. For example, a statement such as, “I understand that this upsets you, is that right?” transforms empathy from a one-sided assumption into a shared meaning-making process between two people.
This validating approach also reduces egocentric inference because, instead of making definitive judgments based on “if I were you,” the person centers the other person’s perspective and reorganizes the meaning according to their feedback.
Finally, it is important to adjust empathy to the right need. It is not only understanding that matters but also the appropriate response. In some situations, the other party may just want to be listened to; in other situations, they may want a solution. When identifying the need and formulating a response, progress should be made based on the other person’s perspective and through verification. Otherwise, empathy can cease to be a capacity for understanding and become an intervention based on false assumptions, and the person may feel that they are being corrected rather than understood.
Therefore, empathy cannot be considered complete without verification and adaptation to the need.