Empathic Concern
An other-oriented feeling of warmth and concern for someone in need, distinct from mirroring their distress — it moves attention toward helping them, not managing your own reaction.
Empathic concern is one of the facets in psychologist C. Daniel Batson's model of empathy, alongside perspective-taking and personal distress. It is the piece that predicts actual helping behavior: feeling concern for someone in trouble, with your focus on their welfare, rather than absorbing their state as if it were your own.
The distinction matters because the alternative response, personal distress, looks similar from the outside but runs the opposite direction. Personal distress is self-oriented: someone else's pain becomes uncomfortable to witness, and the fastest way to relieve that discomfort is to look away or leave, not to help. Empathic concern is the branch of empathy that reliably points toward prosocial action; personal distress more often points toward avoidance.