Compassion vs. Empathy: What’s the Difference?

Compassion means acting from a sense of empathy and altruism to relieve other people’s suffering. Compassionate people seek to exhibit unconditional love to those around them and are eager to find opportunities to alleviate the distress or sadness of others. The word “compassion” descends from the Latin phrases “compati” and “compassio,” both of which mean “to suffer with.”

Empathy refers to experiencing another person's negative or positive emotions as if they were your own. While empathy is generally a component of compassion, the two remain essentially different. For example, an empathetic person might or might not respond with a compassionate action when they take on and experience the emotions of another human being.

There are two types of empathy: emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is a visceral experience—a person directly feels the same feelings as another person. Cognitive empathy is slightly more detached—a person simply understands cognitively what another person is going through but might remain in a different emotional state. Sympathy means practically the same thing as cognitive empathy.

Compassion and empathy share a lot in common, but there are still important distinctions. Here are three primary areas of difference between the two concepts:

1. 1. Action vs. feeling: Compassion requires action to relieve the pain of another, whereas empathy merely requires feeling that pain. Neuroscience indicates feelings of compassion and empathy lead to activation in brain regions like the prefrontal cortex and vagus nerve. Still, different areas of the brain light up when you’re merely experiencing empathy versus going out of your way to perform a caregiving activity.
2. 2. Choice vs. reflex: To fully experience compassion, you must make a choice to do so, whereas empathy is a reflexive emotional response. For that matter, compassion is more of a practice, whereas empathy can occur regardless of whether or not you attempt to cultivate it.
3. 3. Mindfulness vs. distress: Compassion comes from a more calm and mindful state than raw empathy can afford. Compassion allows you to deeply inhabit a person’s suffering without losing your sense of self-awareness and stability, while empathy might leave you in just as much emotional pain and distress as the other person.

Each day presents new opportunities to practice compassion. Here are five ways to show compassion in your daily life:

• Work toward the greater good. Doing your part to increase the greater good is a key ingredient to living a meaningful life. Whether you’re at home, in a grocery store, or in your work environment, odds are you will at some point encounter human beings in pain. True compassion is working to alleviate a person’s suffering no matter who they are or how close they are to you.
• Listen to those around you. Sometimes people just need someone to hear them out. Suppose you see a coworker, friend, or family member in tears. One simple way to act compassionately is to ask if they want someone to listen to them. Rather than veering into commiseration or sharing your own issues, just listen in a nonjudgmental way.
• Perform acts of kindness. When people fall on hard times, quiet acts of compassion and kindness can mean the world. Another key benefit of compassion is that when you make another person feel good, it will likely make you feel good as well. Selfless altruism can ironically fill you with more joy than more selfish pursuits ever could.
• Practice loving-kindness meditation. Metta, or loving-kindness, meditation is a type of Buddhist compassion meditation you can use to increase your sense of empathy and altruism to others. Start by quietly focusing on channeling good tidings toward your loved ones, then your acquaintances, then people whom you find difficult. This serves as a sort of compassion training seminar.
• Remember to take care of yourself. It’s possible you could experience compassion fatigue or burnout if you’re always helping others without taking care of yourself. Practice self-compassion, too—treat your own emotional well-being with as much care as you would another person’s emotions.

Learning to manage empathy and channeling it into acts of compassion can be revolutionary to a person’s life. Here are three tips to utilize this natural response well:

• Ask why you feel empathy. When you feel another person’s positive or negative emotions as if they were your own, ask why that is. Perhaps they remind you of a personal experience. Maybe your empathic reaction is a sign you’re developing greater emotional intelligence. As you inhabit the person’s feelings yourself, see if you can better understand why you are feeling them. This might help you pinpoint why the other person is feeling these emotions, too.
• Observe empathy mindfully. Empathic distress can be unpleasant and actually make you act inappropriately toward the person in pain. It’s useful to put some emotional distance between yourself and these sorts of feelings by attempting to observe them with a nonjudgmental sense of equanimity. Mindfulness or meditation can serve as a kind of empathy training to this end.
• Take action. Channel your feelings of empathy into compassionate acts. Offer condolences to those who are grieving. Act as a caregiver to those who are suffering. When a person feels pain and you feel their pain, too, acting to alleviate it can become a cathartic and healing act for both of you. In other words, compassion gives you a place to put your empathy.

Practicing empathy can help you lead more effectively while building stronger relationships across the personal and professional facets of your life. Challenge your perceptions with the MasterClass Annual Membership and take lessons on emotional intelligence from Pharrell Williams, Roxane Gay, Gloria Steinem, Dr. Cornel West, Walter Mosley, Robert Reffkin, and Robin Arzón.