As far as I understand, “empathy” involves correctly modeling another person’s feelings about a particular situation, and then taking on those feelings as one’s own to some extent. This causes us to feel the same motivations as the other person and generally facilitates alignment of goals, assuming similar models of cause and effect.
When people say they want to be empathized with, I think it’s usually mostly about the shared feelings aspect. Humans don’t like feeling alone, and just having someone there who understands and accepts them, acknowledges their feelings without rejecting their legitimacy, can be comforting.
But there is definitely often a desire to have others take on their own world model as well, to take those shared feelings and direct them toward a shared goal. “I feel sad or angry about something, and I want this to be done about it!” An empathic person who nevertheless understands reality better and sees exactly why this hurting person’s idea would never actually work can still acknowledge their feelings, but they may try to help the hurting person uncover what they actually need rather than what they think they want.
People’s needs matter. People’s feelings matter. But people’s solutions and policy ideas often don’t matter (or rather, they wouldn’t actually solve the problems that cause the feelings).
Use your empathy to absorb people’s needs and feelings, but use your rationality to direct the world toward actual solutions.
As far as I understand, “empathy” involves correctly modeling another person’s feelings about a particular situation, and then taking on those feelings as one’s own to some extent. This causes us to feel the same motivations as the other person and generally facilitates alignment of goals, assuming similar models of cause and effect.
When people say they want to be empathized with, I think it’s usually mostly about the shared feelings aspect. Humans don’t like feeling alone, and just having someone there who understands and accepts them, acknowledges their feelings without rejecting their legitimacy, can be comforting.
But there is definitely often a desire to have others take on their own world model as well, to take those shared feelings and direct them toward a shared goal. “I feel sad or angry about something, and I want this to be done about it!” An empathic person who nevertheless understands reality better and sees exactly why this hurting person’s idea would never actually work can still acknowledge their feelings, but they may try to help the hurting person uncover what they actually need rather than what they think they want.
People’s needs matter. People’s feelings matter. But people’s solutions and policy ideas often don’t matter (or rather, they wouldn’t actually solve the problems that cause the feelings).
Use your empathy to absorb people’s needs and feelings, but use your rationality to direct the world toward actual solutions.