Empathy vs. Sympathy: What’s the Difference?

Empathy and sympathy are often taken to be synonyms, but in reality each term applies to a different situation concerning emotions. An empathetic person is one who feels the emotional state of another human being directly; a sympathetic person is one who feels sorrow for the sake of another human being but doesn’t experience their emotions in the same visceral way.

Both share the root Greek word “pathos” as their base, meaning suffering, feeling, or emotion. While expressing sympathy and feeling empathy both require emotional intelligence, generating an empathetic response to people’s feelings can lead to a deeper sense of shared experience or fellow feeling. For many people, knowing someone is empathizing with them can be more comforting than receiving a sympathy card in the mail or hearing someone is sorry for them.

Empathy means taking on another person’s feelings as your own. It came into the English language from the German word “Einfühlung,” which means “feeling into something.” To empathize is to understand, deeply resonate with, and experience the emotions of another human being as your own.

The prefix “sym” means “together” or “with,” while “pathos” means “feeling”—in other words, you can take sympathy to mean “with feeling.” To sympathize is to express that, while you may not be going through the same pain as another person, you still feel sorry for them and care about them deeply.

Empathy and sympathy diverge when it comes to the ability to share perspectives and the mutual experience of emotional pain. Here are four things to consider when you’re trying to tell whether you are feeling empathy, expressing sympathy, or experiencing both at the same time:

1. 1. Sympathy is abstract. Empathizing is more hands-on—you take on and directly experience the emotions of another person. To sympathize is more abstract—while you may feel genuine sadness and express condolences for a person’s misfortune, you’re not personally feeling the same emotional pain they are.
2. 2. Empathy is feeling the same way. A person with a high level of empathy—sometimes referred to as an empath—feels as if they can share the personal experiences or point of view of another human being in pain. They don’t just feel like they’re sorry for another person’s feelings of sadness, grief, or suffering—it’s as if they were in the person’s shoes themselves. Consider the loss of a loved one: Whether it’s because they’ve been in a similar situation or it just comes easily for them to empathize, an empathic person feels as if they’ve lost a loved one themselves when comforting another who’s grieving.
3. 3. Sympathy lacks personal experience. As for sympathy, you may hear a person has lost a loved one and feel truly sad and sorry for them, but you won’t feel like you’ve lost someone personally. While some may think there’s an air of disconnection to sympathy for this reason, the reality is that you can’t predict how you’ll feel in relation to another person’s plight.
4. 4. You can feel empathy and sympathy in symbiosis. You may well feel both sympathy and empathy to some extent—while both differ in terms of how deeply you can experience another person’s pain directly, they also both emanate from an earnest desire for another person’s wellbeing in the midst of distress. What begins as sympathy can develop into empathy as you more deeply enter into the sorrow of another human being.

Empathy is the ability to take on another person’s plight as your own. Here are three examples of how or when you could use empathy in your own life and writing:

1. 1. A direct similarity: “Believe it or not, I remember what it was like to be in high school—I have so much empathy for you trying to fit in.” If you can directly relate to another person’s experience and conjure up the feelings they’re feeling, you are being empathetic, rather than sympathetic.
2. 2. A developed skill: “It’s important to practice empathy even when you may not directly understand why someone’s upset.” Empathy can also be a learned skill. While many people are naturally empathetic, others develop empathy through really sitting with a person in their distress. It’s hard to only express sympathy when another person’s sorrow begins becoming your own.
3. 3. A feeling of commonality: “I’ve had my own mental health struggles, so I have a lot of empathy for you.” An experience directly similar to another person’s is one of the key signifiers of empathy. The more you have in common with another person, the more likely you are to feel empathy instead of sympathy.

Sympathy is expressing sorrow for another person’s misfortune even when you may not personally understand what it’s like to go through what they’re experiencing. These three examples will give you an idea of when you’re being sympathetic:

1. 1. An attempt to understand: “I’m so lucky to still have both my parents—George’s father just passed away, and I’ve never felt as much sympathy as I do now.” In this sentence, the speaker doesn’t know what it’s like to lose a parent, but that person still feels sorry for someone who has. This is a textbook example of sympathy, as opposed to empathy—you can’t really experience the same pain as another person, but you can still be very sorry they’re going through it.
2. 2. A plea for common decency: “I know you haven’t been a refugee yourself, but can’t you have any sympathy?” Sometimes, we know something better by its absence than its presence—in this case, a person lacks sympathy for someone going through personal travails. It’s obvious the person being questioned can’t be empathetic given that their life experience is so different, but the speaker wants to know if they can at least conjure up some sympathy.
3. 3. An offer of consolation: “I heard yesterday that your son went missing—I have all the sympathy in the world for you.” It’s implied here that the speaker hasn’t had a child go missing, so that renders them less likely to directly empathize with the person they’re consoling. Their ability to express concern regardless is still one of sympathy.

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.