How empathy helps us build long-lasting relationships, and even save lives — and how it can also harm others, and ourselves

To feel what another person is feeling makes us human, triggering the desire to help someone in need and form healthy social connections, experts say

Showing empathy can lead to a loss of self-identity, and illness, though. Then there is the kind of empathy that can lead to manipulation of those in distress

Reading Time:4 minutes

Empathy comes in two forms - one in which you feel what others feel, and another in which you understand what they are feeling but do not share it, and use this knowledge to manipulate the other person.
Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 4:15pm, 28 Nov 2023Updated: 4:19pm, 28 Nov 2023

Empathy is understanding, acknowledging, and being sensitive to others’ feelings, thoughts, and experiences. It makes us human – enabling us to form healthy, social connections – and is the basis for meaningful, long-lasting relationships.

According to a recent study by Chinese academics, the Covid-19 pandemic had a severe impact on adolescents’ abilities to empathise with others. Lockdowns affected young people’s abilities to develop their social skills and engage in more emotional interactions.

Empathy is almost always discussed in positive terms. On the whole, the willingness, desire, and capacity to empathise is a net positive, for individuals and society.

Dr Fritz Breithaupt, a professor of cognitive science and Germanic studies at Indiana University in the United States and author of The Dark Sides of Empathy, writes that, through empathy, the suffering of others is our suffering, but their happiness can be ours as well.

Dr Fritz Breithaupt is a professor of cognitive science and Germanic studies at Indiana University, in the United States, and author of “The Dark Sides of Empathy”. Photo: Dr Fritz Breithaupt

“Empathy can save lives,” Breithaupt adds, “whether by connecting emotionally with a suicidal teenager, or by motivating humanitarian aid workers.”

Psychiatrist Dr Ester di Giacomo, an academic at the University of Milan in Italy, who has researched empathy, tells the Post that the ability to accurately interpret and share the feelings of another “is a crucial aspect among an individual’s skills, and it is fundamental to establish and nourish positive relationships”.