Empathy or Sympathy? What's the difference?

It’s Sunday and that can only mean one thing.  It’s time to share!!  Ok, it can mean other things, but I will feel the same about snow no matter your argument… 

While I love that you read my words in written form, as usual, if you would rather listen, in either of Canada’s official languages, click here: People Power Everything Podcast (Version Francophone)

This week, I thought I would get into some psychological concepts that are often confused and misappropriated, at work and at home. I am going to attempt to explain and talk about empathy and sympathy in particular.  They are fairly common concepts, so I thought it could be a simple explanation, quick and done with no fuss, no muss.  Once again, I was mistaken. There are deeper explanations of both that I took some time to read more about and understand more in-depth. For example, “some authors feel sympathy is a wholly distinct concept from empathy, while others maintain that sympathy overlaps with the emotional component of empathy” (Jeffrey, 2016). Well, that makes it a little more challenging.  I do love a challenge.  Let’s go for a ride. 

First, what are the definitions of empathy and sympathy?  They are terms people get confused about and misuse sometimes.  Simply, empathy is feeling the same or similar emotions of another person, while sympathy is feeling compassion, sorrow or pity without necessarily feeling the emotions ourselves.  Here is a simple table to help:

Alright, so we now have a clearer view of the difference.  All good then! We’re done, right?  Not so fast there, cowgirl.  When I started reading the paper I cited above from Jeffrey, I found out that there are different kinds of empathy that could help us better understand and apply some lessons at work.  We’ll use the healthcare example since I think we can all imagine that healthcare professionals have to be caring, but also protect themselves from the inevitable insanely difficult conversations they will have with patients and families. There are four different dimensions: 

Affective (Emotional) Empathy: This dimension involves sharing and experiencing the emotions of others. In the context of healthcare, it is about emotionally resonating with a patient's feelings, like understanding and sharing their distress or joy. It connects directly to emotional contagion and "feeling into" another’s state.  Sometimes, this can mean that we aren't choosing to feel, it just happens.  This can create difficulty in being objective or becoming overwhelmed by the feelings and losing our ability to help.

Cognitive Empathy: This relates to understanding another person’s perspective and emotions intellectually, without necessarily sharing the emotion. It includes identifying and making sense of a patient's feelings from an objective standpoint. Cognitive empathy is described as an active skill that can be developed and nurtured.  Without first understanding and naming emotions, it becomes very difficult to appreciate which the other person is talking about and feeling. 

Behavioral Empathy: This involves actions that reflect understanding and caring based on affective and cognitive empathy. For example, a healthcare professional might use behavioral empathy by actively listening to a patient, validating their concerns, and taking therapeutic steps that align with their emotional and practical needs.  The validations is an important step to not miss.  We really want to make sure we are understanding what the other person is really saying and feeling.  Ask questions and check your understanding.  If you have had coaching training, you know that paraphrasing is a really good way to do this.  “If I understand you correctly, you are saying…”  following by what they said, but in our own words.  For Agile practitioners, this is akin to check and adjust.  😊

Moral Empathy: This dimension adds an ethical component, involving an internal motivation to care for others and a commitment to alleviate suffering. It ties closely to the moral responsibility of ensuring patients are treated with dignity and care, guided by authentic concern and altruism. This is the same in workplaces.  In Québec, for example, employers have a legal duty to ensure not only physical health and safety, but also psychological health and safety.  In order to do the latter, employers need to understand what that means and how they can do it.  This goes beyond a moral standpoint, but just because it is legally required doesn’t mean that morality goes out the window.  Quite the opposite.

Sympathy, on the other hand, can be seen as anything that gives us what researchers call a “fellow feeling”.  We know that something bad has happened to the other person. We imagine what the other is feeling without really knowing.  Our perspective is on ourselves and how we feel, not on the other side.  This can quickly become feelings of pity of feeling sorry for the other person.  This is when we send our thoughts and prayers, which while is a nice thought, really isn’t helpful at all for the person in pain. Instead, DO SOMETHING. That requires empathy.    

Empathy and sympathy are different in how we connect with other people’s feelings. Empathy means understanding and feeling what someone else is going through while still knowing their emotions are separate from your own. We need to have both emotional connection and to think about their situation from their point of view. Sympathy, on the other hand, is more about feeling sorry or concerned for someone without fully understanding or sharing their emotions. It often focuses more on how the situation makes the observer feel rather than the person who is actually experiencing it.

Here are three simple recommendations to apply empathy better at work, and in everyday life.  Some of these are just being a good friend and listener.

1. Listen Actively: Pay full attention when someone is speaking. Avoid interrupting and show you care by nodding, maintaining eye contact, and asking thoughtful questions about what they’ve said. 
2. Walk a Mile in Their Shoes: Take time to imagine how others might be feeling in a situation. Think about what challenges or emotions they might be dealing with and respond with kindness and understanding.
3. Show Support Through Action: Don’t just understand how someone feels.  Do something to help. This could mean offering help with their tasks, giving encouragement, or simply being there to listen when they need it. It can also mean helping to change a toxic environment, pushing back on unethical leadership or annoying micromanagement, or helping organize a political movement. 

Empathy and sympathy might seem simple at first glance, but they carry much more depth and complexity. Empathy needs us to truly connect with others by understanding their emotions and perspectives, while sympathy involves acknowledging their struggles without fully engaging with their experience. By knowing the differences and applying the four dimensions of empathy—affective, cognitive, behavioral, and moral—we can improve our relationships and create more supportive environments, whether in healthcare like our example, in workplaces, or with friends and family.

Remember, empathy isn’t just a feeling, it’s a skill we can practice and improve through action.  We can all listen better, think beyond ourselves, and act with genuine care. After all, in a world that often feels disconnected despite our hyper-connectedness, practicing empathy might just help us be closer as people, and as we all know, People Power Everything.

I hope you enjoyed and learned as much reading as I did writing it. Have a fantastic week ahead!

John

PS: If you like these, feel free to forward and encourage your friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, leaders, staff, and even mortal enemies to sign up to THE LIST and subscribe to the People Power Everything Podcast which has bonus material from time to time.

References:

Breyer, T. (2020). Empathy, sympathy and compassion. In The Routledge handbook of phenomenology of emotion (pp. 429-440). Routledge.

Jeffrey, D. (2016). Empathy, sympathy and compassion in healthcare: Is there a problem? Is there a difference? Does it matter?. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 109(12), 446-452.

Sinclair, S., Beamer, K., Hack, T. F., McClement, S., Raffin Bouchal, S., Chochinov, H.M., & Hagen, N. A. (2017). Sympathy, empathy, and compassion: A grounded theory study of palliative care patients’ understandings, experiences, and preferences. Palliative medicine, 31(5), 437-447.