Sympathy vs. Empathy: How Do They Compare?

If someone's cat passes away, you may feel sympathy for them. But if their loss comes shortly after your own cat has died, your response might lean more toward empathy. In essence, sympathy typically refers to a sense of pity or similar emotion towards another, whereas empathy is more about understanding and sharing in someone else's emotional experience. This distinction is just one perspective, and many would argue that the modern use of empathy essentially mirrors how sympathy was understood for centuries.

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that sympathy made its debut in the late 1500s, where it was a versatile term describing connections between things sharing common qualities or influencing each other in some way. For example, the sympathy between your mind and stomach might mean that a headache often triggers a stomach ache. If this was a recurring issue, it might even make you sympathetic to (i.e., in agreement with) the idea of the local doctor offering discounts to regular patients.

Although sympathy didn’t always involve people, it certainly could. Writers connected it to love, sorrow, or other emotions, often describing a bond formed through shared experiences. The concept of ‘walking in another’s shoes’ emerged soon after. Philosopher Edmund Burke wrote in 1757, “Sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in a good measure as he is affected.”

When empathy was first introduced over a century ago, it referred to a distinct philosophical relationship: the one between humans and aesthetics. Initially a German term, Einfûhlung, it was coined by philosopher Robert Vischer in the 1870s to describe how people derive pleasure from art and nature. He proposed that we instinctively project our emotions onto inanimate objects, such as a painting or a mountain. The concept quickly caught on with other thinkers, and by the early 20th century, English philosophers had translated Einfûhlung and began using it to explore how humans transfer emotions onto one another.

In this way, empathy evolved into a sociological term that sometimes overlapped with what sympathy already implied. Modern scholars have long debated the distinction between the two. For example, in the 1974 edition of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, philosopher Charles Edward Gauss states: “In sympathy I feel with; in empathy I feel in.” In the 1990 book Empathy and Its Development, psychologists Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer describe empathy as “feeling with” another person, while sympathy, they argue, is “feeling for” someone.

In essence, deciding whether to classify yourself as empathetic or sympathetic in any given situation may require years of psychological analysis and philosophical reflection. Even then, some scholars might still dispute your choice. Since there’s no universally “correct” answer—and language is constantly evolving—feel free to use either term as you see fit.