The HUGE difference between empathy & sympathy explained

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Picture of kaleemyork38 achievements

+6 1. kaleemyork commented 10 years ago

nice ........ <3
Picture of Mucha8 achievements

+7 2. Mucha commented 10 years ago

Nje ushiye lapha :D
In a win-lose situation, the difference would be like this:-
High empathy, low sympathy:-
"Stop feeling so bad, just because you lost! I can't stand your crying!"
High sympathy, low empathy:-
"Somebody had to lose. We did our best, and the best one won".
High in both:-
"Calm down, it's not that bad - here, let me help you..."
Low in both:-
"Hahaha, loser!"
People get sympathy and empathy mixed up because the definitions overlap almost completely. The main difference is that empathy is feeling another's emotions, and sympathy is your own emotion of whether you care. Generally it is sympathy that translates into deliberate action, and is hence more important in the real world. Low empathy just means ignorance of others, while low sympathy means you genuinely don't care about the other person.
Picture of drunkmonk42 achievements

+4 3. drunkmonk commented 10 years ago

Insightful. I am very bad with understanding how people feel about me (Not easy when meeting girls) But I am genius about seeing how people think about me. And I do try to understand the incomprehensible, for me. And this was very insightful.
Picture of loadme33 achievements

+5 4. loadme commented 10 years ago

#3 that's part of growing up. be nice, respectful and take things with humor.
Picture of UckFaOuYa113429 achievements

+6 5. UckFaOuYa1134 commented 10 years ago

At least this video wasn't 15 minutes long!
Picture of Urmensch44 achievements

+5 6. Urmensch commented 10 years ago

#2 Empathy is more important in those situations where there is nothing you can do to make things better. There is no deliberate action to be taken.
Picture of TesticleTom16 achievements
Comment rated too low. Show this comment

-9 7. TesticleTom commented 10 years ago

There is a huge difference between empathy and sympathy.
One "..mpathy" begins with an "e".
and the other "..mpathy" begins with "sy".
Easy.
Next?
Picture of RoyalNorwegian27 achievements

+1 8. RoyalNorwegian commented 10 years ago

#5 How sympathic! I'm glad you told me.
Picture of BennyMG25 achievements

+5 9. BennyMG commented 10 years ago

The video was a perfect description of empathy but a poor one for sympathy. Sympathy is a respectful, agreement or harmony in feelings. The character that was portraying sympathy seemed more patronizing or condescending than sympathetic and that's not what sympathy is.
Picture of SwedishMofo14 achievements

+3 10. SwedishMofo commented 10 years ago

Also, Sympathy isnt too hard to fake, for the purpose of not acting like a jerk.
Lack of Empathy however is a whole different story, since you can't really fool yourself. It just makes you miserable -.-
Picture of roady24 achievements

+2 11. roady commented 10 years ago

Sympathy: n. Community of feeling: power of entering into another's feelings or mind: harmonious understanding: compassion, pity. [Greek sympatheia; syn - with, pathos - suffering.
Empathy: n the power of entering into another's personality and imaginatively experiencing his experiences: the power of entering into the feeling or spirit of something (esp. a work of art) and so appreciating it fully.
Chambers English Dictionary.
I think the whole point of the video was to confuse sympathy with fake sympathy and then say at 1:50 finding a silver lining is not sympathetic. It would not do to have people say "Well your problems really aren't that bad and you should stop watching stuff, get off the drugs, and start helping others"
The American drug companies would not be happy.
This is worth tens of billions of dollars a year, if not hundreds and also many deaths.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/prescribing.aspx

http://neuroamer.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/top-10-most-prescribed-psychiatric-drugs-top-10-overall-and-the-10-we-spend-the-most-money-on/

http://ssristories.com/
Picture of Natan_el_Tigre52 achievements

0 12. Natan_el_Tigre commented 10 years ago

#11 *thumbs up* 8-)