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Harvard Common App Essay: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea.

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. what prompted your thinking what was the outcome.

This summer I flew down to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to attend the University of Alabama Honors Academy. For a week, I lived in the UA Honors College dorms and attended college-level classes and lectures. There were many fascinating lectures, but only one will stay with me for the rest of my life – in a very real sense, it has changed the way I look at the world, and my place and purpose in it.

It was the morning lecture on the second day of the program –Stephen Black, the Director of the University of Alabama Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, was the speaker. He began by describing a conversation he once had with the late Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. Fuller told him that he was proud of his life’s work, but that he was increasingly concerned with the success and legacy of his organization. “How could you be?” Mr. Black asked. “Habitat for Humanity has helped millions of people. It’s one of the most successful charities in the world.”

“It’s true that we’ve helped a lot of folks,” Fuller replied. “We’ve helped over four million people build homes over the years. But since I founded this organization in 1976, the rate of homelessness in America has increased , not decreased. Fewer people own homes now than they did then, and more people are living on the street. How can we look at that and say that we’ve been truly successful?”

Mr. Black looked around the room. “You know,” he said, “your generation is the most charitable, most service-oriented generation in history. No American generation has ever been so enthusiastic about volunteer work and community service … But the fact is, in today’s world, that’s just not enough. I hope that your generation can avoid making the same mistake that other generations have made – mistaking sympathy for empathy. And that starts with each of you as individuals.”

I’ve been turning that thought over in my mind ever since. Ours is the most sympathetic generation in history, but at the same time it is among the least empathetic. Sympathy identifies a problem. Empathy compels us to demand a solution. Sympathy eases pain. Empathy demands an end to pain. In the same way, charity treats the symptoms of a profound illness in society, but true empathy demands something greater. When we realize that the Third World is also part of our world, that “those poor children” are our children, that violence, poverty, and injustice are too often a result of our own ignorance and our own apathy, then we can no longer merely donate an hour of our time or a few dollars of our money and feel that we have done enough. The world will demand more of us, so we must demand more of ourselves.

I’ve decided to do my part to meet that generational challenge – to understand people rather than feel sorry for them, to solve problems rather than treat symptoms, to act on empathy rather than feel sympathy. Whether I am organizing community service events through NHS, raising funds with the MSHS Nerdfighter Club to help build wells in Ethiopia, or simply trying to act more selflessly and responsibly in my daily life, I always find Mr. Black’s words in the back of my mind. It is easy to feel powerless before such great responsibility – I know that there are many days when I worry that despite all my efforts to the contrary, I will not succeed, that, to borrow from David Mitchell, “my life may amount to nothing more than one drop in a limitless ocean.”

“Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

• Essay written by Anonymous

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The case against empathy

Why this Yale psychologist thinks you should be compassionate, not empathetic.

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Who can be against empathy? If our moral intuitions align on anything, is it not on the idea that empathy for other human beings is a good thing? What harm could come from identifying with the thoughts and feelings of our fellow creatures?

According to Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, most of us are completely wrong about empathy. The author of a new book titled Against Empathy , Bloom uses clinical studies and simple logic to argue that empathy, however well-intentioned, is a poor guide for moral reasoning. Worse, to the extent that individuals and societies make ethical judgments on the basis of empathy, they become less sensitive to the suffering of greater and greater numbers of people.

“I want to make a case for the value of conscious, deliberative reasoning in everyday life, arguing that we should strive to use our heads rather than our hearts.” Such is the plea that Bloom makes in the opening pages of the book. What follows is a lucidly argued tract about the hazards of good intentions.

I sat down with Bloom to talk about his case against empathy. To be perfectly transparent, I read Bloom’s book — and entered into this conversation — with a fair degree of skepticism. I’ve long believed empathy to be the basis for human solidarity (for reasons I explain below). So if he’s right, then I’ve been wrong for virtually all of my life.

After reading his book and engaging him in this conversation, I think he’s (mostly) right.

Sean Illing

How do you define empathy? And how is it distinct from, say, compassion or sympathy?

It’s a great question because a lot of people freak out when they see my title. I’ve come to realize that people mean different things by empathy. Some people take empathy to mean everything good or moral, or to be kind in some general sense. I’m not against that. There’s another sense of empathy which is narrower and which has to do with understanding other people. And that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. I think that understanding people is important, but it’s not necessarily a force for good. It can be a force for evil as well.

By empathy I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you’re in pain and I feel your pain — I am feeling empathy toward you. If you’re being anxious, I pick up your anxiety. If you’re sad and I pick up your sadness, I’m being empathetic. And that’s different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it. I care about you, but I don’t necessarily pick up your feelings.

A lot of people think this is merely a verbal distinction, that it doesn’t matter that much. But actually there’s a lot of evidence in my book that empathy and compassion activate different parts of the brain. But more importantly, they have different consequences. If I have empathy toward you, it will be painful if you’re suffering. It will be exhausting. It will lead me to avoid you and avoid helping. But if I feel compassion for you, I’ll be invigorated. I’ll be happy and I’ll try to make your life better.

I take all the points you just made, but empathy still strikes me as a largely positive — or useful — emotion. One could argue that having empathy actually opens the door to more compassion.

My beef is with empathy in particular, with its role in decision making. Empathy has certain design features that do make it positive in certain restricted circumstances. If you and I are the only people on earth and you’re in pain and I can help you and make your pain go away, and I feel empathy toward you and so I make your life better, empathy has done something good. But the real world is nowhere near as simple. Empathy’s design failings have to do with the fact that it acts like a spotlight. It zooms you in. But spotlights only illuminate where you point them at, and for that reason empathy is biased.

I’m likely to feel empathy toward you, a handsome white guy, but somebody who is repulsive or frightening I don’t feel empathy for. I actually feel a lot less empathy for people who aren’t in my culture, who don’t share my skin color, who don’t share my language. This is a terrible fact of human nature, and it operates at a subconscious level, but we know that it happens. There’s dozens, probably hundreds, of laboratory experiments looking at empathy and they find that empathy is as biased as can be.

The second problem is the innumeracy. Empathy zooms me in on one but it doesn’t attend to the difference between one and 100 or one and 1,000. It’s because of empathy we often care more about a single person than 100 people or 1,000 people, or we care more about an attractive white girl who went missing than we do a 1,000 starving children who don’t look we do or live where we don’t live.

So it might feel good but empathy often leads us to make stupid and unethical decisions.

Is empathy necessarily a spotlight? Does it have to be focused on one or two people at a time? Is that part of the structure of empathy or is that just the most common manifestation?

I think it’s part of what empathy is. Empathy as we’re talking about it is, “I put myself in your shoes.” So how many people can you do that with? Well maybe I could do that with you and some other guy at the same time. You’re feeling different things and I kind of got them both in my head. Can I do it for 10 or 12 or a 100 people? No. Maybe an almighty god could do that, could empathize with every living being. But typically, we zoom in on one.

And so it’s different from morality more generally. When I make a moral judgment, I can take into account, if I do this, 10 people will suffer but a thousand people will benefit. And with health care, gun control, or something like that, you deal with numbers.

But empathy, by its very nature, is like a spotlight.

So it’s your view that empathy is not only a poor guide for moral reasoning; it actually makes people — and the world — worse?

I think empathy is a great for all sorts of things. It’s a wonderful source of pleasure, for instance. The joy of fiction would disappear if we couldn’t, on some level, empathize with the characters. A lot of our intimacy would fade. I think empathy is central to sex. It’s great for all sorts of things.

In the moral domain, however, empathy leads us astray. We are much better off if we give up on empathy and become rational deliberators motivating by compassion and care for others.

Can you give an example of empathy gone wrong in everyday life?

I’ll give a controversial one and then a less controversial one. The controversial one has to do with the role of empathy in our criminal justice system, specifically victim statements. In many states, not all, there are victim statements, and these victim statements allow people talk about what happened to them and what it was like when their family member died or when they were assaulted; these often determine sentencing.

I could not imagine a better recipe for bias and unfair sentencing decisions than this. If the victim is an articulate, attractive, white woman, it’s going to be so much more powerful than if the victim is a sullen, African-American man who doesn’t like to talk about his feelings. You suddenly turn the deep questions of how to punish criminals into a question of how much do I feel for this person in front of me? So the bias would be incredibly powerful. So that’s case one.

Case two is about Donald Trump. Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants and Muslims was often framed, particularly early in his campaign, in terms of the suffering of people. He would actually tell these stories. In his rallies, he would tell stories of victims of rape and victims of shooting. He would tell stories of people who lost their jobs. And he was appealing to the empathy of supporters, whose concerns extended mostly to their own tribe.

Three hundred years ago, Adam Smith noted that when you feel empathy for someone who’s been abused or assaulted, it translates into anger and hatred toward those who’ve done the abuse. And I think we see that in the real world all the time. Whenever somebody wants you to kick a bunch of people out of your country or go to war, they’ll tell you a really sad story of some poor person who looks like you and got victimized in some way. Sometimes the story is false, sometimes it’s true, but it is a case in which empathy really goes wrong.

I find your broad arguments about empathy persuasive, but I think your critique doesn’t hold as well for interpersonal relationships or parent-child dynamics. On some level, aren’t we obliged to care more about the people that we love or the people we call friends? And if that’s true, doesn’t that require something like empathy?

This is a great question. I have a whole chapter where I struggle with this. A lot of my book is like, “this is the way it is, man.” But I have a chapter on intimate relationships where I struggle exactly with these questions. It goes off in two directions. So one direction is, “empathy is biased, it plays favorites,” but there are some biases that don’t seem bad. I love my kids a lot more than I love you and I’m not ashamed of that. I don’t think I’m making a moral mistake. And I don’t think it’s a mistake to care more about my friends and my family than about strangers.

I think I’m making a mistake if I care about white people more than dark-skinned people. But friends and family? That seems right. In that sense, the bias of empathy isn’t such a problem. But I think the bias that that reflects is just a more general bias. If you took away empathy from my brain, I’d still love my kids. Because every other emotion is going to go in that direction. In that case, I think empathy’s bias per se isn’t a problem.

The other strand of your question is, the examples we’ve been giving so far have been about policy issues — going to war and victim statements. What about dealing with your kids, with your wife, with your friends? Don’t you want to be empathic to them? And I think the answer to that is mixed. I think the answer is often no.

Suppose you come to me and you’re freaked out, you’re anxious. Do you really want me to get anxious too? Do you want me to empathize with your anxiety, not just understand but feel it too? Presumably not. You want me to be calm. If you’re depressed, you don’t want me to sink into depression. Then you’ve got two problems instead of just one. You want me to sort of be uplifting, cheer you up, put things in perspective.

I think there’s a case for empathy, particularly with positive emotions. If we’re friends and something great has happened to you, you may want me to share your joy, not just be happy that things are well with you but actually share your positive feelings. I see nothing wrong with that.

You made an interesting distinction there between feeling and understanding, and you alluded to this earlier as well. I wonder if you could unpack that just a bit. Are you saying that to be empathetic is to feel what someone is feeling, and not merely to understand it or relate to it in some way?

It’s actually critical to my argument that those are two separate things. Everybody agrees that to be a good person you have to understand other people. You can’t buy someone a birthday present unless you understand them on some level. And you can’t make a kid happy if you don’t understand her. Now as we said in the beginning, understanding is also necessary if you want to ruin somebody’s life, if you want to seduce them or con them or torture them. But understanding still seems to be a necessary condition for doing good. So if it turns out understanding and feeling are essentially entangled, then I can’t argue against empathy. But they aren’t entangled. You can easily find dissociations.

One such disassociation is the competent psychopath. So some psychopaths are not as impressive as you might think. They’re just kind of screwed up people. But some psychopaths are really good with other people. They’re really good with other people because they understand them. They know what you want. They know what you like. They know you better than you know yourself, but they don’t give a shit. They could cause you a lot of pain and not blink.

Do you see any social utility at all to empathy?

I think it leads us to poor moral decisions, but it’s often what people want. There are a lot of cases where people want another person to feel what they feel. Some cases are cases of moral persuasion where I want you to persuade you to help me and to get you to do that I need to get you to feel what I feel. My kid’s in the hospital. I need money for an operation. How would you feel? I try to motivate that as part of persuasion.

I take your point that empathy is often tribalistic, but must it be it that way or is that what it is for most people most of the time? Consider a Buddhist monk or someone who meditates regularly on compassion. Empathy in these cases is not directed at particular people. I’d argue that empathy, exercised in this way, is an orientation, not an emotion directed at someone or something.

Those are two different questions. The monk stuff is interesting. I talk about monks and meditation and Buddhism in my book. They really caution you about empathy. They say to get what you’re talking about, to get where you are, you have to jettison empathy and feel love and compassion, loving kindness. But don’t try to crawl into people’s heads. That will exhaust you. That will cause all sorts of problems.

There’s some evidence that meditative practice and mindfulness meditation makes you into a sweeter person. There’s no definitive evidence of this, but the argument is that mediation makes you more compassionate by diminishing your empathy, so you can help without feeling suffering.

Here’s an analogy I give: Isn’t it unfortunate that people overwhelmingly like delicious and fatty foods? Why can’t they enjoy eating protein powder or spinach day and night? Can you say that it’s impossible to have a person who hates hot fudge sundaes and steaks and enjoys chewing protein powder? Is it impossible to have somebody who isn’t sexually aroused by attractive young people but is instead sexually aroused by virtuous people? Is it impossible there are people who are only angry at global warming but if you chopped off their arm, they wouldn’t mind at all? I don’t know. I don’t think we’re such creatures.

I got into a discussion with a British academic over the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. He says the problem is not enough empathy. I said the problem is too much empathy. He says, but can’t you imagine a person, an Israeli, who feels as much empathy for the Palestinians as he does for his own family? I could imagine it. It’s just not how we typically tend to work.

I’ve always felt that identification with another’s suffering was the key impetus for human solidarity, and that empathy is a gateway to recognizing the commonality of experience. If we want to make the critical shift from solipsism to collective consciousness, don’t we need something like empathy?

I wouldn’t say with confidence that that’s wrong. In some ways, to the extent that empathy can do it, it’s the effect, not the cause. That is, if you put yourself in somebody’s shoes — a person in Africa, a trans individual, a nonhuman, someone who you otherwise wouldn’t relate to, you already have to acknowledge them as a person. It’s not like empathy is this magical thing.

Empathy is a psychological process of imagination. Basically you’re choosing to make that imaginative leap. But that’s the moral choice. Empathy is just the one way you enact it. But then the question is, do you need to enact it? I think about rights revolutions in our times. The dramatic change in attitudes toward gay people and, more recently, the dramatic change in attitudes towards trans people.

I’m not convinced that everybody’s who’s changed or everybody’s who acknowledges these rights, these groups who are otherwise included, does so because they imagine what it’s like. I imagine what it’s like to be a man who wants to have sex with another man and can’t marry. I imagine what it’s like to be somebody with a penis who identifies herself as a woman. Maybe I do that. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I just say, I hear your argument about human rights, and there’s no reason to deprive them.

Perhaps it’s better to think of empathy as an instrument, not a virtue. It can be used for good or ill, depending on the person in whom it’s exercised. Con men, as you say, are exceedingly empathic, which is why they’re so effective. Someone like the Dalai Lama is similarly empathic, only his empathy is put to much better ends.

I think when it comes to moral reasoning, empathy is just a bad idea. It just throws in bias and innumeracy and confusion. But yes, when it comes to moral motivation, empathy can be used as a tool. If I want to get you to help the baby, I can say, look at the baby’s family, I could do that. If I want you to lynch African Americans in the South, I can say, look at these white women who’ve been raped, feel their pain, let’s go! It is a tool.

My point is that there are better and more reliable tools.

I’ve argued elsewhere that privilege has a way of blinding the privileged, and that that is a big reason why people fail to notice the role of luck in their own life and, more importantly, the role of misfortune in the lives of others. Obviously the political implications of this are terrible. I’ve always understood this to be an argument in defense of empathy.

Am I mistaken?

I’ve never thought of it that way. I actually think attempts at empathy might actually make things worse. A friend of mine, another white guy born into privilege, once said very honestly, “I don’t really understand why poor people would do this or do that. If I were in their shoes, I would do this and that and so on.”

You could argue that he’s just not empathizing strong enough; if he fully appreciated what it’s like to lack the right education and so on, perhaps then he’d understand. I wonder if an appreciation of contingency, of blind luck, isn’t something you get through empathy but through a broader understanding.

I’m not entirely sure, but it’s a great question.

I don’t share this view, but there some who think that you place too much faith in pure reason as a guide to morality. At some point, don’t you have to smuggle value or emotion into this? You can easily reason your way into eugenics or some other repugnant worldview, after all.

I make a distinction. I think reason is how we come to conclusions and, more specifically, how we achieve certain ends. What ends you seek can be derived from reason based on some other goals, but they’re ultimately not determined by reason. I could say, I want to make the world a better place and here’s how we should do it. And you could challenge me and say, why do you want to make the world a better place. I’m just going to say, I just do. So reason has to end somewhere.

I’m most interested in cases where rational people share the same goals and then the question is roughly how to get there. And there I think reason is better than emotions.

This story was originally published on January 19, 2017.

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Essays About Empathy: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

If you’re writing essays about empathy, check out our essay examples and prompts to get started. 

Empathy is the ability to understand and share other people’s emotions. It is the very notion which To Kill a Mockingbird character Atticus Finch was driving at when he advised his daughter Scout to “climb inside [other people’s] skin and walk around in it.” 

Being able to feel the joy and sorrow of others and see the world from their perspective are extraordinary human capabilities that shape our social landscape. But beyond its effect on personal and professional relationships, empathy motivates kind actions that can trickle positive change across society. 

If you are writing an article about empathy, here are five insightful essay examples to inspire you: 

1. Do Art and Literature Cultivate Empathy? by Nick Haslam

2. empathy: overrated by spencer kornhaber, 3. in our pandemic era, why we must teach our children compassion by rebecca roland, 4. why empathy is a must-have business strategy by belinda parmar, 5. the evolution of empathy by frans de waal, 1. teaching empathy in the classroom., 2. how can companies nurture empathy in the workplace, 3. how can we develop empathy, 4. how do you know if someone is empathetic, 5. does empathy spark helpful behavior , 6. empathy vs. sympathy., 7. empathy as a winning strategy in sports. , 8. is there a decline in human empathy, 9. is digital media affecting human empathy, 10. your personal story of empathy..

“Exposure to literature and the sorts of movies that do not involve car chases might nurture our capacity to get inside the skins of other people. Alternatively, people who already have well-developed empathic abilities might simply find the arts more engaging…”

Haslam, a psychology professor, laid down several studies to present his thoughts and analysis on the connection between empathy and art. While one study has shown that literary fiction can help develop empathy, there’s still lacking evidence to show that more exposure to art and literature can help one be more empathetic. You can also check out these essays about character .

“Empathy doesn’t even necessarily make day-to-day life more pleasant, they contend, citing research that shows a person’s empathy level has little or no correlation with kindness or giving to charity.”

This article takes off from a talk of psychology experts on a crusade against empathy. The experts argue that empathy could be “innumerate, parochial, bigoted” as it zooms one to focus on an individual’s emotions and fail to see the larger picture. This problem with empathy can motivate aggression and wars and, as such, must be replaced with a much more innate trait among humans: compassion.

“Showing empathy can be especially hard for kids… Especially in times of stress and upset, they may retreat to focusing more on themselves — as do we adults.”

Roland encourages fellow parents to teach their kids empathy, especially amid the pandemic, where kindness is needed the most. She advises parents to seize everyday opportunities by ensuring “quality conversations” and reinforcing their kids to view situations through other people’s lenses. 

“Mental health, stress and burnout are now perceived as responsibilities of the organization. The failure to deploy empathy means less innovation, lower engagement and reduced loyalty, as well as diluting your diversity agenda.”

The spike in anxiety disorders and mental health illnesses brought by the COVID-19 pandemic has given organizations a more considerable responsibility: to listen to employees’ needs sincerely. Parmar underscores how crucial it is for a leader to take empathy as a fundamental business strategy and provides tips on how businesses can adjust to the new norm. 

“The evolution of empathy runs from shared emotions and intentions between individuals to a greater self/other distinction—that is, an “unblurring” of the lines between individuals.”

The author traces the evolutionary roots of empathy back to our primate heritage — ultimately stemming from the parental instinct common to mammals. Ultimately, the author encourages readers to conquer “tribal differences” and continue turning to their emotions and empathy when making moral decisions.

10 Interesting Writing prompts on Essays About Empathy

Check out below our list of exciting prompts to help you buckle down to your writing:

This essay discuss teaching empathy in the classroom. Is this an essential skill that we should learn in school? Research how schools cultivate children’s innate empathy and compassion. Then, based on these schools’ experiences, provide tips on how other schools can follow suit. 

An empathetic leader is said to help boost positive communication with employees, retain indispensable talent and create positive long-term outcomes. This is an interesting topic to research, and there are plenty of studies on this topic online with data that you can use in your essay. So, pick these best practices to promote workplace empathy and discuss their effectiveness.

Write down a list of deeds and activities people can take as their first steps to developing empathy. These activities can range from volunteering in their communities to reaching out to a friend in need simply. Then, explain how each of these acts can foster empathy and kindness. 

Based on studies, list the most common traits, preferences, and behaviour of an empathetic person. For example, one study has shown that empathetic people prefer non-violent movies. Expound on this list with the support of existing studies. You can support or challenge these findings in this essay for a compelling argumentative essay. Make sure to conduct your research and cite all the sources used. 

Empathy is a buzzword closely associated with being kind and helpful. However, many experts in recent years have been opining that it takes more than empathy to propel an act of kindness and that misplaced empathy can even lead to apathy. Gather what psychologists and emotional experts have been saying on this debate and input your analysis. 

Empathy and sympathy have been used synonymously, even as these words differ in meaning. Enlighten your readers on the differences and provide situations that clearly show the contrast between empathy and sympathy. You may also add your take on which trait is better to cultivate.

Empathy has been deemed vital in building cooperation. A member who empathizes with the team can be better in tune with the team’s goals, cooperate effectively and help drive success. You may research how athletic teams foster a culture of empathy beyond the sports fields. Write about how coaches are integrating empathy into their coaching strategy. 

Several studies have warned that empathy has been on a downward trend over the years. Dive deep into studies that investigate this decline. Summarize each and find common points. Then, cite the significant causes and recommendations in this study. You can also provide insights on whether this should cause alarm and how societies should address the problem. 

There is a broad sentiment that social media has been driving people to live in a bubble and be less empathetic — more narcissistic. However, some point out that intensifying competition and increasing economic pressures are more to blame for reducing our empathetic feelings. Research and write about what experts have to say and provide a personal touch by adding your experience. 

Acts of kindness abound every day. But sometimes, we fail to capture or take them for granted. Write about your unforgettable encounters with empathetic people. Then, create a storytelling essay to convey your personal view on empathy. This activity can help you appreciate better the little good things in life. 

Check out our general resource of essay writing topics and stimulate your creative mind! 

See our round-up of the best essay checkers to ensure your writing is error-free.

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

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Learn How to Write a Perfect Empathy Essay

Are you having a hard time, finding good tips and tricks on writing an empathy essay? Of course, writing it gets easy when you have the proper guidelines. Such as the  professional research paper writers  have for you in this interesting blog post.

Writing an empathy essay is like delving into understanding emotions, seeing things from other’s perspectives, and showing care and understanding. It talks about how empathy shapes relationships, impacts society, and why it’s vital for a kinder world.

No need to fret, as this blog post is like a friendly guide for beginners that will help them understand everything about writing an empathy essay. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is an Empathy Essay?

An empathy essay or emotions essay revolves around the exploration and analysis of empathy as a concept, trait, or practice. It’s about exploring and analyzing what empathy is all about, whether it’s a concept, a trait, or something you have to practice. You know, getting into the nitty-gritty of understanding emotions, different perspectives, and how we can relate to other people’s experiences.

The point of this essay is to show how empathy is super important in relationships, connections between people, and even in society as a whole. It’s all about showing how empathy plays a big role and why it’s so important.

Key elements in empathy writing include a clear definition and explanation of empathy, supported by relatable anecdotes or case studies to illustrate its application. It should delve into empathy’s psychological and societal implications, discussing its effects on individual well-being, relationships, and society at large. Moreover, the empathy essays require a balanced exploration of challenges and complexities related to empathy, such as cultural differences, biases, and the boundaries of empathy in various situations.

Students might find it useful to consider a  professional paper writing service  for an empathy essay due to various reasons. These services often provide access to experienced writers who specialize in crafting well-researched and structured essays. Professional writers can offer a fresh perspective, present nuanced arguments, and ensure the essay meets academic standards.

Why Empathy Essay Writing is Challenging for Some Students?

Writing an essay with empathy can pose challenges for students due to several reasons.

Complex Nature of Empathy

Understanding empathy involves navigating emotional intelligence, perspective-taking, and compassionate understanding, which can be challenging to articulate coherently.

Subjectivity and Personal Experience

Expressing subjective feelings and personal experiences while maintaining objectivity in empathic writing can be difficult for students.

Navigating Sensitivity

Addressing sensitive topics and human complexities while maintaining a respectful and empathetic tone in writing can be demanding.

Handling Diverse Perspectives

Grasping and objectively presenting diverse perspectives across different cultural and social contexts can pose a challenge.

Time Constraints and Academic Pressures

Juggling multiple assignments and deadlines might limit the time and focus students can dedicate to thoroughly researching and crafting an empathy essay.

Expert Tips on Writing a Perfect Empathy Essay

Here are some tips with corresponding examples for writing an empathy essay:

Start with a Compelling Story

Begin your essay with a narrative that illustrates empathy in action. For instance, recount a personal experience where you or someone else demonstrated empathy. For instance:

Example:  As a child, I vividly recall a moment when my grandmother’s empathetic nature became evident. Despite her own struggles, she always took time to comfort others, such as when she helped a neighbor through a difficult loss.

Define Empathy Clearly

Define empathy and its various dimensions using simple language.

Example:  Empathy goes beyond sympathy; it’s about understanding and feeling what someone else is experiencing. It involves recognizing emotions and responding with care and understanding.

Use Real-life Examples

For achieving empathy in writing, incorporate real-life instances or case studies to emphasize empathy’s impact.

Example:  Research shows how empathy in healthcare professionals led to improved patient outcomes. Doctors who showed empathy were found to have patients with higher satisfaction rates and better recovery.

Explore Perspectives

Discuss different perspectives on empathy and its challenges.

Example:  While empathy is crucial, cultural differences can sometimes pose challenges. For instance, what’s considered empathetic in one culture might differ in another, highlighting the need for cultural sensitivity.

Highlight Benefits

Explain the positive outcomes of empathy in various contexts.

Example:  In workplaces, empathy fosters a more cohesive team environment. A study by the researcher found that leaders who display empathy tend to have more engaged and motivated teams.

Acknowledge Challenges

Address the complexities or limitations of empathy.

Example:  Despite its benefits, there are challenges in maintaining boundaries in empathetic relationships. It’s important to balance being empathetic and avoiding emotional burnout.

Conclude with Impact

Wrap up by emphasizing the broader impact of empathy.

Example:  Ultimately, fostering empathy creates a ripple effect, contributing to a more compassionate and understanding society, where individuals feel seen, heard, and supported.

Steps of Writing an Empathy Essay

Here are the steps for writing an empathy essay. You’ll notice that most of the steps are the same as  writing a research paper  or any such academic task.

Understanding the Topic

Familiarize yourself with the concept of empathy and its various dimensions. Define what empathy means to you and what aspects you aim to explore in your essay.

Gather information from credible sources, including academic articles, books, and real-life examples that illustrate empathy’s role and impact. Take notes on key points and examples that you can incorporate into your essays on empathy

Create an outline that includes an introduction (with a thesis statement defining the scope of your essay), body paragraphs discussing different aspects of empathy (such as its definition, importance, challenges, and benefits), and a conclusion summarizing the main points.

Introduction

Start your essay with a compelling hook or anecdote related to empathy. Introduce the topic and provide a clear thesis statement outlining what you’ll discuss in the essay.

Body Paragraphs

Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of empathy supported by evidence or examples. Discuss empathy’s definition, its significance in different contexts (personal, societal, professional), challenges in practicing empathy, benefits, and potential limitations.

Use Examples

Incorporate real-life examples or case studies to illustrate your points and make them relatable to the reader.

Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge differing perspectives or potential counterarguments related to empathy and address them thoughtfully within your essay.

Summarize the main points discussed in the essay. Restate the significance of empathy and its impact, leaving the reader with a lasting impression or call to action.

Edit and Revise

Review your essay for coherence, clarity, and consistency. Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Ensure that your ideas flow logically and that your essay effectively communicates your thoughts on empathy.

Make any necessary revisions based on feedback or additional insights. Ensure that your essay meets the guidelines and requirements if it’s for a specific assignment. Then, finalize and submit your empathy essay.

Final Thoughts

In this blog post, we’ve tried to make writing an empathy essay easier for students. We’ve explained it step by step, using easy examples and clear explanations. The goal is to help students understand what empathy is and how to write about it in an essay.

The steps we’ve shared for writing an empathy essay are straightforward. They start with understanding the topic and doing research, then move on to outlining, writing, and polishing the essay. We’ve highlighted the importance of using personal stories, real-life examples, and organizing ideas well.

Students can benefit from our  assignment writing service  for their empathy essays. Our experienced writers can provide expert help, ensuring the essays meet academic standards and are well-written. This support saves time and helps students focus on other schoolwork while getting a top-notch empathy essay.

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Books of The Times

Review: ‘Against Empathy,’ or the Right Way to Feel Someone’s Pain

By Jennifer Senior

• Dec. 6, 2016
• Share full article

Paul Bloom ’s new book, “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion,” is too highbrow to be a self-help or parenting manual, but parts of it could be. Its wingspan is too wide to be a simple guide to philanthropy, but parts of it could be that as well. And it’s a bit too clotted with caveats to be a seamless read, which is a shame, because it could have been, with more shaping.

Look past the book’s occasional loop-the-loops and intellectual fillips. “Against Empathy” is an invigorating, relevant and often very funny re-evaluation of empathy, one of our culture’s most ubiquitous sacred cows, which in Mr. Bloom’s view should be gently led to the abattoir. He notes that there are no less than 1,500 books listed on Amazon with “empathy” in the title or subtitle. In politics, practically no higher value exists than being empathetic: Think of the words “I feel your pain” coming from Bill Clinton through a strategically gnawed lip. Empathy is what is invoked, on both sides, in confrontations between the police and African-Americans. (Imagine how it feels to live in a universe of systematic and serial injustice directed at you; imagine how it feels to work in a profession that continually puts you in harm’s way.)

Mr. Bloom, a psychology professor at Yale, is having none of it. Empathy, he argues, is “a poor moral guide” in almost all realms of life, whether it’s public policy, private charity or interpersonal relationships. “Empathy is biased, pushing us in the direction of parochialism and racism,” he writes. Offended? He’s just warming up. “It is innumerate,” he continues, “favoring the one over the many. It can spark violence; our empathy for those close to us is a powerful force for war and atrocity toward others.”

It turns out that Mr. Bloom’s view is far more nuanced than the provocative declaration above. (There are moments when he fireproofs his arguments with so many qualifications that they’re hardly inflammatory by the time he’s done.) And he is by no means making the case for heartlessness. His point, rather, is that empathy is untempered by reason, emanating from the murky bayou of the gut. He prefers a kind of rational compassion — a mixture of caring and detached cost-benefit analysis. His book is a systematic attempt to show why this is so.

To those who say empathy is essential to morality, he’d reply that morality has many sources. “Many wrongs” — like littering or cheating on your taxes — “have no distinct victims to empathize with.” Nor does it appear that the most empathetic people behave the most ethically. “There have been hundreds of studies, with children and adults,” he writes, “and overall the results are: meh.”

To those who say empathy motivates philanthropy, Mr. Bloom wouldn’t dispute it. He personally is not immune, having given money for years to a child — and then the child’s family — in Indonesia. But he’d say that empathy is generally a bad tool to use for allocating resources. We have a limited capacity for feeling the pain of others, and we tend to identify with those who remind us of ourselves. “This perverse moral mathematics,” he explains, “is part of the reason why governments and individuals care more about a little girl stuck in a well than about events that will affect millions.”

“Against Empathy” covers a great deal of ticklish turf, from neuroscience to political science, from Jesus Christ to Adolf Hitler. But the most emotionally resonant for me was his chapter about empathy in intimate relationships.

Consider parenting. Almost all mothers and fathers have a terrible time tolerating the discomfort of their children. Yet it’s often essential. If parents allowed their children’s pain to overwhelm them, how would they make their kids go to the dentist, do their algebra, or spend their first night away from home? “Good parenting involves coping with the short-term suffering of your child — actually, sometimes causing the short-term suffering of your child,” he writes.

If you live in a state of hypercommunion with others, you run the risk of emotional depletion — or “empathetic distress,” as a psychologist might say. It’s useless in the face of suffering. Better to answer with compassion, which doesn’t totally subsume the self.

In this same chapter, however, I also found myself at my most disoriented — possibly because Mr. Bloom is at his loosest and most discursive, and possibly because it seems to be the one place where he is most amenable to empathy’s charms. He seems to understand why people who’ve been wronged would want an empathetic apology. And he writes approvingly of Adam Smith’s observation that we should generally keep our good fortune to ourselves, because it will most likely excite envy, rather than shared elation, in our friends. But that’s an empathetic reaction, is it not? Anticipating our friends’ envy? So maybe empathy still has a place to stave it off…? I wish he’d said.

One day he might. More than any book I’ve read this year, “Against Empathy” is an overt, joyful conversation with readers. In his prologue, Mr. Bloom notes that sections of “Against Empathy” initially appeared as essays in a variety of publications, but have since been modified, in part because of reader responses. (Some more constructive than others. “Possibly the dumbest thing I ever read,” was one of the first tweeted comments.) Much later, he admits he’s no longer certain he believes evidence of empathy in infants he cited in his 2013 book, “ Just Babies .”

It all makes you long — in a good way — for a comments section after the endnotes. Mr. Bloom has a nice feel for the untidiness of ethical thought.

I would be particularly interested in hearing Mr. Bloom weigh in on this year’s presidential election. He has so much faith in reason. Yet “post-truth” was named Oxford Dictionaries’ 2016 international word of the year , and an aide to Donald J. Trump, our president-elect, recently declared on NPR , “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts.” (Or grammar, apparently.)

Toward the end of “Against Empathy,” Mr. Bloom concedes that “rationality in political domains often does seem to be in short supply.” He theorizes that this is because people treat politics like sports — their opinions are based on team loyalty, not objective merit. “Political views share an interesting property with views about sports teams — they don’t really matter ,” he writes, then further explains: “Unless I’m a member of a tiny powerful community, my beliefs have no effect on the world.”

But of course political beliefs matter. Every four years, they matter a lot. This year, they mattered especially. If you believe the worst, the next four years will be low on both empathy and rational compassion. If so, our world won’t be simply be post-truth. It will be post-moral.

Follow Jennifer Senior on Twitter: @JenSeniorNY

Against Empathy

The Case for Rational Compassion

By Paul Bloom

285 pages. Ecco. $26.99.

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Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work Essay

Introduction, the meaning of empathy, what it takes for one to express empathy, empathy in the society, empathy in the study book, how important is empathy, works cited.

Empathy is a virtue that is associated with human beings. It can be said to be one of the virtues that separate caring and uncaring people. This article examines the meaning of empathy in general. It shows what it means to have empathy as a human being. Empathy is also examined from the context of the book Do androids dream of electric sheep. The context of the story in this book reveals, in a special way, how empathy can be and cannot be expressed. The effects of expressing and not expressing empathy are also looked at. Over expression is specifically pointed out as being unhealthy.

Empathy has been defined as the ability to identify with a situation that another person is going through. It has also been defined as the ability to experience another person’s feelings (Empathy 1). When a person identifies with another person’s situation and tries to alleviate or mitigate the stressing factor in the situation, then one can say that he or she is expressing empathy. Acts of empathy may therefore include such actions as giving food to the needy in the society or providing shelter to those who are homeless. Generally, empathy has much to do with acts of kindness directed to people faced with situations which are hostile. It is kindness directed to people who need it based on how the donor or the person giving has perceived the situation at hand (Vincent 10).

The feeling of empathy comes up when there is a clear difference between the person being empathetic and the one who is the subject of empathy. Generally, two persons in the same unfortunate situation may not manifest empathy feelings towards each other. This is because of undergoing the same situation and neither of them may be in a position to help the other. But if two people are experiencing different unfortunate circumstances at the same time, they may be able console each other thus they may show empathy to each other. For instance, a bereaved person may show empathy to another person who has lost his or her house to fire.

Empathy can be examined as a feeling that pushes a person to do something good for another person particularly when the other person is in a bad situation. Basically, for one to express empathy therefore one needs to have feelings. One has to feel and be touched by what others are going through. Because empathy is just but a feeling, it does not really cost much, at least financially, to feel empathetic. However, acts of empathy may cost some resources depending on individual acts in question (Thagard 15).

What it takes to express empathy is therefore the ability to have the feeling first such that there is identification with the situation at hand and then being in a position to offer the help required in whole or in part. Empathy has to do with feelings and in cases where a person’s feelings have been hardened; empathy may not be manifested easily. A good illustration is those that propagate violence especially the leaders (Thagard 15).

Empathy can only be expressed between two person or more. For empathy to be expressed, one party (one person or persons) has to be in a disadvantaged or hostile position in order for the other to offer some assistance. It is worth noting that acts of empathy or helping others who are a hostile situation or in a position that need assistance should be on a voluntary basis. If one is coerced to help another person then such an action may not pass as an act of empathy. Empathy therefore has significantly to do with the willingness to help out of one’s own volition or free will.

There are many ways in which empathy can be expressed in the society. More often than not, people in the society are not endowed equally and therefore there are some who are less privileged. One way on expressing empathy therefore is by lending a hand to those who are less privileged. One way in which this can be done perfectly is through visiting children homes. Most of the children in these homes are orphans. By spending time with them, playing and talking with them, they get the feeling of being cared for. This is important as it enables them to develop self confidence. Apart from spending time with them one can gift them with items such as clothes.

One may also express empathy to the sick especially those admitted in hospitals. Patients admitted in hospital are more likely to undergo psychological distress especially because of being away from family members. Expressing empathy in this case can be done through a word of encouragement. Words of encouragement as gestures of empathy will also work well in a family setting especially when one of the members has been faced with an unfortunate situation, for instance, falling sick.

The study book Do androids dream of electric sheep depicts in a clear manner the meaning of empathy and how it is applied. The book starts by setting the conditions right for the empathy to be exercised. The whole world is destroyed and only a handful of living things survive. Human beings as well as animals are left vulnerable and in a state where they need each other. Empathy in this book is shown as a biological trait which no android, even the most intelligent, can imitate. This is because emotions cannot be programmed into a computer (Dick 1).

I am of the view that it is the human beings who are the subject of empathy in this book. This may sound reversal but taking into consideration the joy and satisfaction that humans get from keeping animals, it turns out to be true. To keep an animal is prestigious and those who cannot afford animals are forced to find pleasure in keeping electric animals. This act of keeping electric animals as seen in the book can only point out to the fact that humans have some desire within themselves to offer care that if not satisfied disturbs them. Animals come in to satisfy that need by accepting to be cared for by the humans.

Technically, as the animals are being shown empathy by being cared for they are also playing a major role of showing empathy to humans by allowing themselves to be cared for. Indeed in the book, empathy is viewed as a two way traffic action whereby one party is willing to show empathy to another party and the other party is willing to accept the actions of empathy advanced by the first party.

Empathy is a vital virtue to human beings. It can be said to be among the virtues that help to make the society better. As was noted in the book, empathy differentiates us from machines. It gives us the kindness that makes human beings different from animals. Empathy also helps to unite people as they identify with one another in various struggles that they undergo (Waal 1).

Although it has been generally agreed that empathy is important, there is a caution that it should be expressed carefully in some cases. Caregivers need to express empathy when attending to patients. However, it has been noted that expression of empathy too much may make the patients vulnerable to be hurt (Hojat 12). Too much expression of empathy in such a scenario may also make the patients feel that their situations are dire. Such a feeling will obviously do more harm than any good (Eisenberg 1).

Empathy has been viewed as the ability to identify with a situation that another person is undergoing. Empathy significantly has to do with feelings. Empathy is shown when a person is in an unfortunate situation that may need consoling. In most cases, empathy propels a person to do something about the situation in question. The feeling of empathy will therefore push one into action, however in some cases there are no actions which might be done. Therefore, empathy does not change because one has not responded to the prompt to act.

It has also been discussed that it only takes feeling to have empathy. Since one does not need to act in order to show empathy, it can be argued that almost every person can express empathy. Those who may not display empathy are those who have hardened their emotions. Showing empathy has a positive effect on those who receive it.

Empathy consoles them and psychologically strengthens them to keep on fighting. This is especially the case for patients. However, it has also been cautioned against too much expression of empathy as it may create the impression that a person is in such a desperate situation that he or she might not recover. This will psychologically affect the person in a very negative manner.

Dick, Philip. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep . New York: Orion, 2010. Print.

Eisenberg, Nancy. Empathy and Its Development . New York: CUP Archive, 1990. Print.

Empathy. Empathy vs. Sympathy . DIFFEN, 2013.

Hojat, Mohammad. Empathy in Patient Care: Antecedents, Development, Measurement, and Outcomes . New York: Springer, 2007. Print.

Thagard, Paul. The Brain and the Meaning of Life . New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010. Print.

Vincent, Steve. Being Empathic: A Companion for Counselors and Therapists . New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2005. Print.

Waal, Franz. The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society . New Jersey: Crown Publishing Group, 2010. Print.

• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2022, May 3). Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work. https://ivypanda.com/essays/philosophy-of-empathy/

"Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work." IvyPanda , 3 May 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/philosophy-of-empathy/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work'. 3 May.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work." May 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/philosophy-of-empathy/.

1. IvyPanda . "Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work." May 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/philosophy-of-empathy/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Empathy: What Is It and How Does It Work." May 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/philosophy-of-empathy/.

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Are you an empath or a deluded narcissist?

An investigation into the internet’s mass empath awakening.

Two years into a pandemic, we all need a bit more empathy – both towards each other and ourselves. It’s commonly accepted that most people possess empathy and the ability to empathise, but for self-described “empaths”, their relationship with empathy goes a little further. According to Dr Carla Marie Manly , a practising clinical psychologist based in California, the term “empath” refers to the ability to “tune into” another person’s energy, feelings and experiences. If you’re an empath, she tells Dazed, it apparently means that you have “perceptual abilities” which are “experienced on a continuum”.

People defining themselves as empaths isn’t new, but in recent years, more and more people have adopted this identifier, and interest in empath culture has consequently skyrocketed. While the r/Empaths subreddit – an online forum designed for people who believe they have these “perceptual abilities” – has existed since 2013, its membership dramatically spiked from the end of 2019 onwards, increasing from approximately 20,000 members to nearly 100,000 members in the past two years. Membership spiked during the pandemic, with over 60,000 people joining the subreddit from March 2020 onwards. ( Data from Google Trends also shows that there was a rapid increase in people searching for the term “empath” throughout 2021.)

At the same time, the past year or two has seen a new wave of empath-related content on TikTok . Related tags such as “empath”, “empaths of TikTok” and “empath awakening” have an enormous presence on the app, drawing in 1.2 billion, 170.6 million and 6.9 million views respectively. 

The timeframe coincides neatly with the spread of COVID-19 and our subsequent isolation – and according to psychologist Saul Rosenthal , this is no coincidence. H e explains that it’s possible the “growing conversation” about empaths has risen from people’s “reflection of the ongoing chronic stress related to the pandemic”.  According to Rosenthal, “ch ronic stress raises sensitivity and decreases tolerance.” As a result, “it may well be that more people are ‘feeling’ other people’s emotions even more strongly than usual, and having a harder time managing that.” This, Rosenthal tells Dazed, could be why so many people are drawn to the label. “The concept of the empath provides an explanation that many people will experience as positive,” he says.

But not everyone feels that way. In fact, the term garnered widespread attention this year after a TikTok sparked an anti-empath movement. In the clip, which has since been deleted, TikTok user @lillunah describes herself as an “empath” who “meets the person everyone speaks so highly of”. In the video, she casts herself as the empath, who uses her high levels of “perception” to deduce that the person everyone liked wasn’t exactly how they seemed.

@youknow.julia #duet with @lillunah just in a silly goofy mood #fyp #empath #WhenRiftanSays ♬ The Time is Coming - Aery Yormany

Unfortunately, while this TikTok definitely blew up, it probably wasn’t in the way @lillunah wanted. Between December 2021 and January this year, countless stitches and duets renounced the user for “pretending” to be an empath. A lot of users called the video “cringe” and mocked it with parodies – many of which went viral, morphing the TikTok into a meme known only by an infamous catchphrase: “Me, an empath.”

The “ me, an empath” meme did not begin on TikTok, and has been appearing sporadically on Twitter since 2017. But the format still more or less follows the same structure: a hyperbolic and oftentimes absurdly obvious “bad” situation – such as meeting a serial killer – is followed up by the “empath” saying that they sense “bad vibes”. Or, in another example, the “empath” does an action that unsurprisingly upsets a person – such as killing their dog or punching them in the face – and follows this up by saying that their heightened perception makes them “sense” the other person’s distress. While the meme takes various forms, a consistent cynicism underlies it: the belief that self-proclaiming “empaths” are either faking their abilities, or confusing the basic ability to perceive people’s feelings with some kind of superpower.

Me, an Empath, visiting the ruins of Pompeii: "I'm sensing something bad happened here" pic.twitter.com/9rCWLflz9k — Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens (@CSMFHT) February 12, 2022

When it comes to empath-mocking, cultural theorist Matt Klein says that it is a reflection of the “cyclical, ironical nature” of online culture. “Like Newton's Third Law of Motion, in culture it can be argued that for every action, there’s an opposite and equally strong reaction. The ‘me, an empath’ meme is a reaction , ” he tells Dazed. “ You have people mocking those who are choosing not to mock but instead care, as a response to all the mocking which already exists.”

In all fairness to those who mock empaths, it’s not like they have the best high-profile role models. The term appears to be reserved for people who frequently occupy online spaces: for example, YouTubers like Shane Dawson and Trisha Paytas, who have respectively faced accusations for racism and anti-Semitism, among many other controversies, are both notorious for self-identifying as empaths.  However, according to Rutledge, a true empath wouldn’t be inclined to engage heavily online. Many users of the r/Empath subreddit claim that they actually suffer quite badly as a result of their heightened empathy, often finding themselves feeling drained from the negative nature of social media and feeling inclined to delete their account as a result. “If you were interested in managing emotions and protecting yourself as a true empath, you would cut down on your consumption of media (both social and news) and limit exposure to emotional triggers,” Rutledge says.

So is this the start of a mass #empath #awakening? There’s no way to be sure, but what we do know for certain is that, according to experts, the term is just the latest in a long line of online trends. “Like many psychological terms, there is an ebb and flow in interest for certain concepts,” Dr Manly tells Dazed. “For example, terms such as narcissism, love-bombing, and gaslighting come into vogue for a spell and then interest flattens, only to resurge later.”

Jamie Cohen, an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Queen’s College in New York, agrees, saying “these TikTok trends” are a cycle: “It’s something that, for a brief moment, becomes a meme because several videos go viral and inspire copycat (ie meme) content.”

“Sometimes I think TikTok just finds the decaying content forests of Tumblr and gives them water again and replants them on TikTok,” he adds, finally. “It’s old cycles on a new platform.”

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