Sympathy vs cognitive empathy

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The word 'empathy' comes from Greek and means 'feeling in' someone... i.e. that means you literally feel their emotions in some form (regardless of whether you can tell outwardly that they are feeling anything). It accounts for why some people are capable of understanding and communicating with animals e.g. horse-whispering etc.

This definition seems to correspond to 'affective empathy' which autistic people often have in trumps - being able to sense others' intentions and get a strong feeling for certain people or environments (whether you can control your responses being another question, of course). The mirror-neurons play a vital role in this ability http://issp.inner-growth.org/486-2/?fbc ... 19y2xQeCGw

'Sympathy' on the other hand means 'feeling with' someone... reading the outward signs, and/or knowing the reasons why they would be feeling a certain way, and then being able to express understanding for their situation and perhaps looking for ways to make them feel better.

However it seems to me that the term 'cognitive empathy' just doesn't fit in with these terms at all! It's a contradiction. Empathy is 'felt'. Cognitive empathy apparently just means reading the outward signs and looking for clues as to how someone might be feeling and responding to you. I've read that psychopaths are adept at this, while they lack affective empathy.

I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this.

Last edited by katy_rome on 24 Nov 2019, 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

My understanding of cognitive empathy is knowing how to react to what a person is feeling.

This isn't easy because first you have to understand about feelings and aslo you have to understand how your actions may impact on other people.

Sympathy for me is the ability to listen to a person and do the appropriate facial expressions so they think I care. So it is kind of similar to cognitive empathy but without the pretentious label.

I feel empathy on a physical level like if someone falls and hurts themselves. But on an emotional level I'm completely lost.

People often get misled by the word empathy. NTs use "lacking empathy" as a term for doing bad things, while Aspies use it as a term to describe complex thoughts and behaviours.

In the news, if a person commits any crime like robbery, raping, threatening or murder, they usually describe the criminal as "this person lacked empathy". I see those words written a lot in the newspaper. That is why I find it unsettling when NTs say that Aspies lack empathy, because usually their definition of empathy is either criminals, bullies, psychopaths or any other types of horrible and insensitive behaviour.

The doctor who diagnosed me gave me a book, and in one of the early chapters it talks about the confusion between empathy and sympathy. The aspie author of the particular guide aspergers said "aspies have loads of sympathy, but lack empathy".

So from the springboard of that author said my understanding of it is the following.

1) empathy is about theory of mind. Figuring out what others are thinking and feeling.

2) Sympathy is caring what others think.

3) Empathy is subdivided into "cognative empathy" and "affective empathy". The former is knowing what others are feeling, the later is being attuned to, or being effected by, how others feel.


An aspie has "sympathy but lacks empathy". Most NTs have both. But a NT sociopathy has empathy, but lacks sympathy.

Maybe this is a bit simplistic, but:

Aspies are too inept to know how you feel (with out you stating it verbally), but do care how you feel.
A sociopath knows how you feel, but don't care because they think of you a piece of furniture to use and exploit, so they use that knowledge to use and manipulate you without mercy. el.

How old was that book? I'm living proof that an Aspie is capable of knowing how people feel. In fact most of my intentions are correctly revolved around how others will feel.
I believe I have more empathy than sympathy.

Got it a couple of years ago. I think its an apt description. Fits me (or fits how I was when I was younger) pretty well.

Maybe it fits a lot of Aspies but I've been told by many people, including 2 different therapists, that I am very emotionally empathetic, or "emotionally bright".

This is a very good explanation, thank you for this.

I feel that I have both but not always consistently. Sometimes I can be very empathetic and I even do a little bit of inter species communication like the original poster mentioned. I also have loads of sympathy as you just explained. But my empathy radar can fluctuate very dramatically. I don't know what causes it to fluctuate but I find it very interesting that it does.

Yes, I very much see the point about sympathy and empathy. Interesting indeed.

For a person who is highly empathetic (I can often quite literally feel others' emotions, when I'm attuned to that person) and also highly sympathetic (I would never voluntarily hurt anyone or any creature and would be terribly upset to find that I inadvertently have!) I am astonishingly and shockingly hopeless at... ha! cognitive empathy! How interesting...

I really, really need to be told sometimes. People who expect me to just 'know' that I ought to or ought not to do or say a certain thing in a certain situation... that I might appear insensitive, unthinking, even heartless - are going to be in for a disappointment. Why don't they just TELL ME?! Firstly, how they feel, and secondly, how I should behave next time in order to make them feel better. The more specific the better!

However I become ever more convinced that 'cognitive empathy' is an oxymoron. It's just a silly term in my opinion, as empathy (also considering its roots) ought to mean the direct feeling part. I think there should be another word for the cognitive part.

This discussion is quite clarifying though. And very interesting. Anyone else with own experiences, I'd love to hear about them.

For the record, I strongly believe that autistic people do NOT lack empathy.
Quite the contrary.

I actually think it's due to an unusually high sensitivity that autistic people are liable to shut off their empathy ...involuntarily.. in some cases entirely, in many cases just towards other humans, and very often in specific situations or when faced with certain challenges e.g. people being Machiavellian or manipulative, or otherwise untruthful and confusing, or disloyal.

That does it for me, I shut down towards them. I think it's possibly a post-trauma reaction (i.e. due to previous experiences of being hurt) and is done in self-defense.

To me it appears to be a question of survival, in such a world...

OK then.
I had an "empathy overload" today at work. A co-worker lost his wallet 4 days ago, then this morning it had been found underneath a desk. The supervisor put this down to the cleaner not doing her job properly because she was cleaning in that area for the last 4 days and didn't seem to see the wallet.
But the cleaner is foreign and knows little English, so when the supervisor told her about it, she got upset because she thought he was accusing her of stealing the wallet but he wasn't at all, he was just telling her to be more observant in future.
I didn't like seeing her upset, because I know how horrible it is to think you're falsely accused of something, so I comforted her and try to explain in the simplest way that she wasn't being accused of stealing anything, but she still didn't understand. The supervisor just said that he was not accusing her, and I said, "we know that, but she doesn't." (I was looking at it in HER shoes). Then he said that it doesn't matter, but I couldn't let the matter rest there. I could not start work knowing that she was upset, and the thought of her having to start work feeling falsely accused will not be fair on her. So I took her into the main office and got the assistant manager to translate the situation into her own language on the computer so that she can understand what we were trying to say.
When she read it, she smiled and I could tell she understood then what the situation was about and she looked more relaxed. I felt relaxed after that and we all started work happily.

Most of the others there were only thinking of themselves, like: "well we know we weren't accusing her, so we can drop the matter now,", where as I was thinking, "well, we know we weren't accusing her, but because of her language barrier she thought we were accusing her, and it was making her feel upset and frustrated". I just had to resolve the matter because seeing her upset made me feel upset. I felt so overloaded with empathy that I had tears from relief after the matter was solved, especially when she was very grateful to me for supporting her.

Nice looking summary.

I wonder, when you say "Sympathy is caring what others think," would it perhaps be more accurate to say "Sympathy is caring what others are feeling"?

"Caring what others think" sounds perhaps a little cold and calculating, as if I were only concerned with what they think about me, for example.

I think you might be right. I think caring what others feel rather than think is more accurate

I don't have empathy, I have sympathy. Most people mistake sympathy for empathy.

Does feeling bad for someone count as empathy? Today online, someone posted a photo of their melted Nintendo Switch because he turned his heater on and forgot he had his Switch dock on it. He showered and ten minutes later it was all melted. I thought "oh no, so sorry for what happened" and was glad that wasn't me. Also it showed don't ever use your heater as a night stand. This was what this man did. But that man did get a lot of mockery comments in his thread and no sympathy and he seemed to have taken it well. Plus he got a lot of upvotes too for his thread.

I wish someone will give me feedback on my empathy situation mentioned in my previous post here...

Based on the definitions, it sounds like some combination of empathy and sympathy is involved in the situation you described. Cognitive empathy because you figured out what the cleaning lady would have been thinking and feeling, and sympathy because you cared about what she would be feeling.

I would have thought that your emotional reaction that you described sounds more like a "sympathy overload" than an "empathy overload." Cognitive empathy, to me, seems like a rather detached, logical process of working out what someone might be feeling. I don't see much room for having an "overload" of that. On the other hand, the sympathy that you were feeling was an expression of the fact that you cared about her feelings. Plenty of room for feeling an "overload" of the emotions there.