A few years ago, “empathy” became a buzzword, a trend, much like avocados, man buns, or Netflix.

When I was in fifth grade, my school system unveiled a new initiative called R.A.I.S.E. (respect, achievement, inclusion, service, and empathy), a set of guidelines for how everyone in the community was expected to act. I was sitting in my elementary school gym during an all-school assembly when my principal made the announcement about R.A.I.S.E. Having never heard of empathy before, I was given my first definition of the word when he told us that “to have empathy is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” He also told us that having empathy was the key to becoming better people.

I was a soft, impressionable fifth grader, and so of course when I heard that empathy was the key to it all, I believed it without question. If we all put ourselves in one another's shoes, then we would be able to understand the actions of those around us, reconcile our differences, and get along swimmingly.

Unfortunately, things are never as simple as they seem, and empathy is no exception. Many people who tout empathy as the badge of Good Samaritan-ship, my fifth-grade administrators included, are as well-intentioned as they are under informed. A simplistic understanding of empathy can never be the be-all and end-all of solutions to our mistreatment of one another, nor the only road to becoming a good person. But a fuller understanding of empathy can deepen interpersonal interactions by building emotional connections between individuals.

While the first definition of empathy I was given certainly encompassed what my teachers and administrators were trying to instill in us in grade five, it is not a precise definition of the word. So let’s establish the definition of empathy that I am going to work with so that we can all remain on the same page. Empathy is the act of understanding someone else’s feelings and experiences. Empathy comes into practice in three ways: either you react to someone’s feelings with feelings of your own, you understand someone’s emotions but don’t experience any yourself, or you see someone’s distress and show compassion. The first type of empathy is called emotional empathy, the second is called cognitive empathy, and the last, a little different from the first two, is empathic concern.

There are situations in which each type of empathy can be appropriate and helpful; however, there are also situations in which the wrong type of empathy can be harmful. I believe that more important than the question of whether we have enough empathy for one another is the question of whether we have the right kind of empathy.

Cognitive empathy on its own calls simply for you to understand someone else’s experience. No part of cognitive empathy involves doing anything to make people feel better, reciprocate their feelings, or even let them know that you understand their pain.

Cognitive empathy is a purely passive experience. It may help someone feel calm, but it may have little or no effect. However, there are times when cognitive empathy can be very useful. A doctor who understands what a patient is going through but is able to remain calm and professional may put the patient more at ease than a doctor who expresses the same anxiety that the patient is feeling.

Therapists are perhaps the best example of the use of cognitive empathy. For those who find seeing a therapist helpful, cognitive empathy can be a great positive. But therapy does not work for all people. Some find seeing a therapist uncomfortable, stressful, or upsetting, and in those moments there is little that the removed, listening ear of cognitive empathy can do to help.

Emotional empathy, unlike cognitive empathy, does involve reciprocating others' feelings. It entails sharing others’ burdens, taking on their experiences and their suffering and internalizing it so that you feel as they do, or as close to it as possible. For people who are in pain, knowing that someone else feels for them may help them heal.

People often feel bonded after a shared emotional experience, so emotional empathy can lead to close and trusting relationships. If a friend or family member confides in you that they are struggling, it is natural to feel anxiety or concern for them. Feeling for others is not automatically a bad thing. Emotional empathy can provide closeness and understanding in interpersonal interactions that may not be present otherwise.

While it is possible to have emotional empathy without overextending yourself, it is also possible for emotional empathy to be detrimental to the person feeling it. Over time, it can become self-destructive for someone to internalize the pain of others. Studies show that people who feel a lot of emotional empathy for those around them are more likely to suffer from depression and find themselves emotionally spent. They use so much of their energy taking in the problems of others that they have none left to deal with their own issues. While it is important to be a good listener and to let the people in our lives know that we are there for them, it is also important to maintain at least some emotional distance from their problems, lest we take them on and make them our own problems, too.

Empathic concern differs from the first two expressions of empathy in that the person giving empathic concern does not internalize what the other person is going through, either through intellectual understanding or emotional reciprocation. Empathic concern happens when a person sees someone in need of support, and shows them sympathy and tenderness. Empathic concern is also called compassionate empathy, as it is essentially the same as compassion.

If a friend walked up to you and said, “I have a stomachache,” you might offer her a hug, tell her that you are sorry, ask if she is alright, or say something along the lines of “At least your appendix isn’t rupturing. I hear that’s even more painful.” These responses are examples of empathic concern, as they show tenderness and sympathy when faced with another person’s difficult situation. You do not have to feel stomach pain yourself or accurately understand the specifics of the other person’s pain in order to feel empathic concern. In this way, empathic concern is the easiest to have. It is the least vulnerable.

Empathic concern comes from seeing someone else’s distress and wanting to help fix it, to make it go away, while other types of empathy involve understanding a person’s distress and possibly feeling it with them. Despite your intentions, empathic concern cannot usually mend a situation on its own. It is about offering comfort or finding a silver lining, and typically blankets a wound instead of healing it. Importantly, it also rarely causes harm to either the person giving or the person receiving the compassion.

It seems as though it should be relatively simple to figure out what type of empathy to use when. But it takes extreme self-awareness to judge how you should react or not react in every interaction you have. And even if you were able to pick the correct brand of empathy for a situation, there would still be other pitfalls that could easily slip past even your heightened self-awareness.

The main issue is that every person has some degree of bias, and that bias shows itself when people express empathy unequally. People feel more empathy for people they perceive to be like them, and less empathy for people they see as different. This leads to rifts in empathy along lines of gender, class, religion, and particularly race.

In one study, researchers presented a test group with images of people experiencing different types of physical pain, such as stubbing their toe or getting shampoo in their eyes. The subjects had to rate how much pain they thought each person was experiencing. The results showed that the test group assumed that black people felt less pain than white people did. Even when the black and the white people in the images were going through the same things, the perceptions of those in the test group dulled the pain that the black people were experiencing, while they better understood the emotions of the white people.

You can see these same results in real life. The US justice system treats black people more harshly than white people, most likely because juries (in many cases composed of a majority of white jurors) have less empathy for black defendants than white defendants. On average, black people are given longer sentences than white people for the same crimes, and black youths are more likely to be tried in adult court than white youths. People, especially white people in America, are often unable to empathize equally across lines of race, whether that prejudice is conscious or not.

This prejudice acknowledged, it is still true that certain types of empathy in certain situations can do amazing things as far as people interacting with and understanding one another.

My best friend is someone that I met last year, and even though I have not known him half as long as I have known most of the other people in my life, we understand each other better than anyone else. When we first started spending time together, we would go on walks, often for hours, and usually to escape the homework piling up at our desks. On these walks we would tell each other stories about things that we had gone through — maybe that day, or a few weeks ago, or when we were five years old. We would switch off, telling and then listening to each other’s stories.

I started to understand how he felt about certain memories without having to ask. I began to anticipate how he would react to certain situations. More and more, I understood why he is who he is. And me, my personality, and my emotions have become just as blatant to him. If we had not been able to understand each other’s experiences and feel them together, and instead had just talked about them, I might not have so good a friend.

Empathy is certainly something to strive for when building connections with others. But it is still a fad that many people have latched onto without fully understanding it. An avocado can do wonders to an otherwise boring sandwich, but too much avocado can lead to over-consumption of fats and nutritional deficiencies. Empathy acts the same way. Too much of it, or the wrong kind of it, has the power to do more harm than good. And so before we feel all high and mighty going around offering up our empathy to anyone having a bad day, it is important to understand the effects we may have on others, as well as ourselves, so that we can be certain we are choosing the right type of empathy, and the right amount of emotional investment or distance for a specific situation.

Simply telling people to be more empathetic in all that they do is a sloppy answer to the complicated question of whether or not we have enough empathy and whether or not we use the empathy we do have appropriately. Each interaction requires its own balance of empathy in order for that interaction to be the most positive and productive it can be for both parties. The better answer would be for us all to achieve an improved understanding of empathy in all its forms, as well as how each type of empathy impacts others and ourselves when put into practice. We must then train ourselves to be in tune enough to choose the correct variety of empathy for a time and place, and to be conscious enough of our own prejudices to treat everyone with the same level of empathy regardless of how many or how few commonalities we see between ourselves and the person we are interacting with.

Perhaps the most difficult task of all is the one I was taught first. In fifth grade, I was charged with putting myself into other people’s shoes, and that challenge becomes even more important when faced with those we see as different than we are. The only way we will overcome personal and societal prejudice is to consider the concept of empathy even more deeply and intentionally. It is a mistake to pretend that reflexive empathy alone will cure problems such as greed, selfishness, or prejudgment. Instead, we must approach empathy, and each other, with a focus on openness and understanding, so that we may more clearly see all of our struggles, as well as our paths to overcoming them.

Sources:

_{Bloom, Paul. "Against Empathy. Boston Review. September 10, 2014. https://bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy}

_{McEvers, Kelly and Leslie Jamison. "Empathy: How Should We Care About One Another?" Author interview. NPR Morning Edition. April 15, 2014. http://www.npr.org/2014/04/15/303172368/empathy-how-should-we-care-about-one-another}

_{Riggio, Ronald E. "Are You Empathic? Three Types of Empathy and What They Mean." Psychology Today. August 3, 2011. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201108/are-you-empathic-3-types-empathy-and-what-they-mean}