Sympathy Vs. Empathy

I learned that empathy involves stepping into someone's shoes to truly understand how they feel. It involves an active intellectual attempt to understand what is happening to someone. This differs from sympathy because empathy doesn't require any emotional response and sympathy is only an emotional response. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone, feeling pity for them, even though you don't really relate to their situation. An example of empathy without experiencing is understanding the pain people went through during the holocaust even though you've never been treated that poorly. You just have to use your mind to comprehend and put yourself in their shoes. You can also empathize with a sociopath, like many criminal investigators do, to understand why they behave like they do. Empathy is key in studying history because it helps you understand what preconceptions made people behave the ways they did in certain situations. Without empathy it is very difficult to understand certain historical actions you are studying. 

Empathy