Moving beyond Stereotypes of Empathy.

Most theorists agree that empathy describes multiple distinct but related processes through which people respond to others’ emotions. These include an ‘affective’ component – vicariously taking on others’ feelings – a ‘cognitive’ component – reasoning about others’ emotions – and a ‘motivational’ component – desiring for others’ emotional states to improve. Psychologists variably name these pieces of empathy (Table 1). Using ‘empathy’ as an umbrella term for multiple processes usefully organizes the study of interpersonal emotional, in the same way that ‘memory’ unites disparate processes through which the past affects people.