786-110
Empathy vs. Sympathy: What's the Difference?
Writers oftentimes confuse the two words empathy and sympathy.
They are usually used in similar contexts, a death in the family, a job loss, a robbery, etc.,
but they aren't the same and have different meanings. So in order to keep our
writing precise, we should be careful not to mix either of them up.
Today I want to illustrate the differences between empathy vs. sympathy, showcase their
uses in a sentence, and give you some tips to keep track of them. After reading this post,
you shouldn't have any more trouble with these two words.
When to Use Empathy
Empathy is a noun and is defined as, "the ability to indentify with or understand another's situation or feelings."
For example,
- I have empathy for those families who lost their house in the storm. A tornado once destroyed my house.
- Having been late to work many times himself, the boss had empathy on the employee who was late.
Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes to understand that person's situation. In the
example above, the boss, having been late to work himself, had empathy for and understood why the employee was late for work.
Empathy is the newer of the two words, with its first use recorded in 1895. Sympathy,
on the other hand, has a first recorded use in the late 1500s.
When to Use Sympathy
Sympathy is a noun and is defined as, "a feeling of pity or sorrow for the distress of another." For example,
- I offered my sympathy to the grieving mother.
- Their sympathy for the victims led them to donate.
So you can clearly see the difference between the two words. Sympathy is a compassion and
sorrow one feels for another, but empathy is more focused around personally identifying with
or projecting oneself into another's situation.
You may feel bad for the person who was just laid off from their job, but if you have never been laid off yourself,
you cannot have empathy for him or her. You can feel sorry, have compassion, and give them sympathy,
but you can't have empathy for their situation.
Empathize vs. Sympathize
This same thought process underlines the two verb forms of empathy and sympathy, empathize and
sympathize. Empathize denotes a stronger, more personal sense of shared feeling than does sympathize.
This doesn't mean, however, that you cannot use sympathy or sympathize to describe "sharing or
understanding the feelings of another." The word sympathize is 300 years empathy's senior with this meaning.
You can share or even understand the pain someone is going through without going through it yourself.
Empathy, and by extension empathize, is the power of projecting one's personality into (and so
fully comprehending) the object of contemplation. It is much more
personal and specific than sympathy.
To give another example, I may sympathize with the person whose house was just burglarized because
I can understand how vulnerable it must make one feel, but I cannot have empathy
because my house has never been robbed.
Remember the Difference
Here are two tricks to remember which of these words is which:
You can remember that sympathy deals with sorrows and feeling sorry for someone because it starts with an "S."
Similarly, you can remember that empathy is more personal and requires you to put yourself in that
person's shoes. Shoes and empathy both have an "E" in them.
Summary
The two words sympathy vs. empathy cause a bit of confusion in people's writing, but they have different meanings.
Empathy is more specific and personal than sympathy. It involves personally putting yourself in that
persons shoes and knowing what they are going through.
Sympathy is a more general feeling or sorrow for another person's situation.
