Sympathy vs. Empathy

Although sympathy and empathy sound very similar, and many people relate them to each other, they have many differences. A few similarities between the two words include that they have to do and are involved with someone else, and they both have something to do with feeling. The definition of sympathy is feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune. This word is more involved with feeling and emotion towards someone else. The definition of empathy is the intellectual identification or various experience of the feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of others. Empathy has less to do with feeling, than sympathy, and more to do with understanding, and putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Some key words that also go along with empathy include, knowledge, experience, imagination, and thinking about feeling. Empathy is an essential tool for historians, because it can make them think about what each historical figure was thinking when something significant happened, such as the Holocaust. The historian can empathize and try to understand what many of the jews went through to gain better knowledge about the topic, and try to understand what Hitler was thinking and why it occurred. Empathy also allows for historians to understand why certain leaders made poor decisions for their countries, because imagining and understanding certain situations can help to gain this knowledge.