Affective Empathy

"Affective response is a physiological component that involves the automatic and unconscious process of affect sharing, or the mirroring of another person’s actions. For example, when sitting with a client who is crying, a practitioner might feel as if she or he is going to cry. This is a result of the automatic mirroring action that is going on unconsciously. Our mirroring neuron system activates the same physiological sensations as if we are actually doing the action. However, rather than begin to cry, the practitioner experiences the other components of empathy that are triggered to process this affective response. The other three components are cognitive processes. " (WAGAMAN + 2014)

"Affective sharing. The experience of similar emotions between the self and an other, “based on automatic perception-action coupling and shared representations.”

(Decety & Moriguchi, 2007, p. 4).

Which Factors Shape Our Empathy?

BY EMILIANA R. SIMON-THOMAS

JULY 31, 2017

"But first, what is empathy?

While the dictionary definition is ready available, the GGSC’s definition of empathy is based on science. Each scientific discipline has its own approach to studying empathy.

Then researchers can ask: This kind of work has generated two flavors of empathy.

• The first is called affective empathy, and refers to the inner feelings that arise and the subtle copying of expressions that happens when we see others express emotion.

• The second is cognitive empathy, which is how we understand what other people’s emotions mean and why they typically occur."