Which of the following best describes the difference between empathy and sympathy?

• A. Empathy is feeling sorry for someone, while sympathy is being able to experience the same emotions as another person.
• B. Empathy involves understanding and sharing another person's feelings, while sympathy involves feeling concern or pity for someone else's situation without necessarily sharing their emotions.
• C. Empathy is a cognitive process, while sympathy is an emotional process that does not involve understanding another person's feelings.
• D. Empathy and sympathy both mean experiencing the same emotions as another person.

Answer: (B)

Verified step by step guidance

1. Step 1: Understand the definitions of empathy and sympathy separately. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, essentially putting yourself in their shoes emotionally.
2. Step 2: Recognize that sympathy involves feeling concern, pity, or sorrow for someone else's situation, but it does not require sharing or fully understanding their emotional experience.
3. Step 3: Compare the emotional involvement in both concepts. Empathy requires a deeper emotional connection where you experience similar feelings, whereas sympathy is more about acknowledging someone's hardship from a distance.
4. Step 4: Identify that empathy can be both a cognitive and emotional process because it involves understanding and sharing feelings, while sympathy is primarily an emotional response without necessarily understanding the other person's perspective.
5. Step 5: Use this understanding to evaluate the answer choices by matching these definitions and distinctions to select the option that correctly describes empathy as sharing feelings and sympathy as feeling concern without sharing emotions.