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Empathy can be defined as our natural capacity to share, appreciate, and respond to the affective states of others. This capacity is essential for the regulation of social interactions. For instance, empathy is believed to motivate prosocial behavior and inhibit aggressive behavior (2). In addition, our ability to share the emotions of those we observe binds us to each other and fosters a collective social identity. Empathy’s invisible power is that it moves us to cooperate, coordinate our behaviors, and provide the needed care for one another. Notably, however, empathic concern does not necessarily lead to empathic behavior. First, empathy poses a paradox, as sharing of feelings does not necessarily imply that one will act or even feel impelled to act in a supportive or sympathetic way. Second, the complexity of the social and emotional situations eliciting empathic concern influences the probability and nature of the help provided. Whether and how empathic actions are expressed depends on the feelings we perceive in the other, our relationship with that individual, and the context in which we share an emotional state.

Empathy is critical for complex human interactions, but this does not mean that empathy and prosocial behavior have suddenly appeared with Homo sapiens. If empathy is a potent invisible force generated by the social brain, some form of emotion-sharing should also be evident in other social species such as non-human primates. Indeed, field observations conducted by comparative psychologists and ethologists suggest that behaviors homologous to empathy can be found in non-human primates (2). Some have argued that empathy is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon, and that many intermediate forms of empathy exist between the extremes of mere agitation at the distress of another and full understanding of their predicaments (3). Many comparative psychologists view empathy as a kind of induction process by which emotions, both positive and negative, are shared, and which increase the probability that the protagonists will subsequently engage in similar behavior.

Though certain non-human primates may share feelings between individuals, humans seem to have the unique ability to intentionally “feel for” and act on behalf of other individuals whose experiences may differ greatly from their own. Such a capacity may help explain why empathic concern is often associated with prosocial behaviors such as helping kin, and why it has been considered the foundation for altruism, the expression of empathy and caring for those who are not kin. Evolutionary biologists have suggested that empathic helping behavior evolved because of its contribution to genetic fitness (kin selection). In humans and other mammals, an impulse to care for offspring is almost certainly genetically hard-wired. Less clear, however, is whether an impulse to care for siblings, more remote kin, and similar non-kin is genetically hard-wired. The emergence of altruism is not easily explained within the framework of neo-Darwinian theories of natural selection (but see Cacioppo’s chapter on this point). Social learning explanations of kinship patterns in human helping behavior are thus highly plausible. Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of human empathy is that it can be felt for virtually any “target,” even targets of a different species (animals included). We can see a deer hurt by a passing car or the dogs locked in crates at a shelter and feel

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