Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position. There are many definitions for empathy which encompass a broad range of emotional states. Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and somatic empathy. In the development of human empathy, individual differences appear, ranging from no apparent empathic ability, or empathy which is harmful to self or others, to well-balanced empathy, including the ability to distinguish between self and other. Various theories and aspects of empathy have been researched, including empathy within nonhuman animals.