Written by the Fiveable Content Team โข Last updated September 2025
Verified for the 2026 exam
Verified for the 2026 examโขWritten by the Fiveable Content Team โข Last updated September 2025
Definition
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another person without necessarily experiencing them firsthand.
Related terms
Compassion: Compassion involves feeling empathy towards someone's suffering and taking action to alleviate it.
Perspective-taking: Perspective-taking is actively imagining oneself in another person's situation in order to better understand their point of view.
Emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and express one's own emotions as well as perceive and respond empathetically to others' emotions.