From the course: Communicating with Empathy
Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.
What is empathy?
- To be empathetic communicators, we first need to be empathetic. So what's empathy, and what does empathy look like in the real world? Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. So there are two types of empathy, affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Affective empathy, also called emotional empathy, is the kind of empathy that we all have inherently. This is where we react to another person's display of emotions. If someone is crying, we get them a tissue. If someone is smiling at us, we smile back. Cognitive empathy, or perspective taking, is what happens when we're trying to be actively empathetic. Cognitive empathy is when we're attempting to feel what the other person feels in order to better understand and engage with them. To further explain what empathy is, let's discuss what empathy is not, and empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorrow or pity for…
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.