Empathy

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate November 2001

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All of us have had compaction for one thing or another in our lives. Our sympathetic feelings toward something is empathy. It is a basic requirement for all human beings. It is natural for us to have an empathetic response towards things. Empathy is a very powerful tool towards our emotional distress. It is hard for us to resist the power of empathetic feelings. When we feel empathy we feel other peoples emotional distresses. We try to feel sympathetic towards the situation or the person. When empathy comes into play we try to solve the problem and take the other persons perspective on the problem. An empathetic person feels what the other person is feeling and why. One can be empathetic towards fictional situations and characters. Empathy is an emotion that we strive to satisfy even if it means risking our lives or being very uncomforadable.

Empathy is an emotion shown in people as young as twelve months.

Our empathy builds as we grow older. An important aspect of empathy is to be able to consider the viewpoint of another person. This is also known as perspective taking. This is why people risk their lives to save someones life or just save someone from harm. Usually people who risk their lives to save people are very empathetic of people. People who posses a low level of empathy towards people tend to not take as much risks for the sake of solving a problem. But some people find it quite necessary to satisfy their empathetic emotions. This breed of people obviously take more risks . When you imagine how another person perceives an event and how he or she feels as a result, this is called taking an "imagine other"� perspective. When we see on the news that an innocent bystander...