Empathy is based on self-awareness. The more we give in to our own emotions, the more knowledgefully we will read the feelings of other people. Inability to celebrate the feelings of another person is the main deficit of emotional intelligence. An unfortunate flaw in terms of what it means to be human. Be that as it may, mutual understanding - the basis of care - arises as a result of emotional mood, thanks to the ability to empathy.
How empathy is revealed
At that moment, when Hope, who was barely nine months old, saw how a child fell, unable to rest on her legs, tears streamed from her eyes with streams. She crawled to her mother for comfort, as if she had fallen and hurt herself. And Michael in his fifteen months went after a teddy bear to give it to a tearful friend Paul. When that didn’t help, Michael pulled out Paul’s woolen blanket from somewhere. These seemingly insignificant manifestations of sympathy and care were observed by their mother, who was given the task of recording such manifestations of empathy.
The results of the study showed that the rudiments of empathy are found in infancy. So, from the first day, newborn babies become anxious if they hear that some child was crying nearby: some consider this reaction a harbinger of empathy.
Psychologists have found that infants experience distress caused by empathy, even before they fully realize that they exist separately from other people.
Even the crumbs sympathize with the pain of others .
Often, one-year-olds mimic the suffering of a person nearby, perhaps in order to better understand what exactly he feels. For example, if a girl hurts her fingers, another girl, at the age of one year, may repeat her actions to check if she will also be hurt. One kid, seeing that his mother was crying, wiped his eyes, although there was not a tear in them.
The so-called motor mimicry conveys the original special meaning of the word “empathy,” in which it was first used in the 1920s by the American psychologist E. B. Titchener. According to Titchener's theory, empathy came from some physical imitation of the suffering of another, which then awakens the same feelings in the simulator. He was looking for a new term, not "sympathy": you can experience it to the general position of another person, without sharing the feelings of another person.
Empathy and Ethics: A Source of Altruism
"Never send to know who the bell is ringing, it is ringing for you." This phrase is one of the most famous in all English literature. John Donne’s statement addresses the essence of the link between empathy and concern: the suffering of another person becomes your own.
To live with another person is to take care.
The empathic attitude now and then comes into contact with moral assessments, for moral dilemmas require potential victims: do you have to lie in order to spare the feelings of a friend? Do you keep your promise to visit a sick friend, or instead accept a last-minute dinner party invitation? When should the life support system of a person who otherwise would die be supported?
Man is a social being.
These moral issues are formulated by empathy researcher Martin Hoffman. He argues that the roots of moral behavior should be sought in empathy. Only the ability to put oneself in the place of potential victims - say, a suffering person who is in danger or in hardship - and thus share their grief and encourages people to act in ways that help them. The direct connection between empathy and altruism is found in personal meetings. The same ability for an empathic emotional reaction - the ability to put oneself in the place of another person - as Hoffman believes, and forces people to follow certain moral principles.
Empathy underlies many aspects of moral assessment and action. An example of this is “empathic anger,” which John Stuart Mill describes as “the natural sense of retribution generated by intelligence and sympathy for ... those insults that hurt us by hurting others.” Mill also calls him "advocate of justice."
Another example of the fact that empathy induces a moral act is a situation where an outside observer has a desire to intervene in what is happening and come to the aid of the victim. Studies show that the greater empathy a casual witness experiences for a victim, the greater the likelihood of his intervention.