Sympathy - Definition and Overview

Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person give rise to similar feelings in another person, creating a state of shared feeling. In common usage, sympathy is usually the sharing of unhappiness or suffering, but it can also refer to sharing other (positive) emotions as well. In a broader sense, it can refer to the sharing of political or ideological sentiments, such as in the phrase "a communist sympathiser" .

The psychological state of sympathy is closely linked with that of empathy, but is not identical to it. Empathy refers to the ability to perceive and understand another person's emotions, but does not necessarily imply a sharing of these emotions. A capacity for sympathy, however, requires that the recognition of emotion can cause similar emotion to arise in the observer.

See also

• compassion
• acceptance
• liking
• emotional intelligence