Empathy

Psychologists split empathy into two components that can move independently. Cognitive empathy is knowing what someone else is thinking or feeling — reading their situation accurately, without necessarily feeling anything yourself. Affective empathy is the involuntary echo: another person's distress triggers something like distress in you. A skilled negotiator can have strong cognitive empathy and weak affective empathy; a person who "catches" every mood in a room may have the reverse.

Empathy is also different from sympathy, which is feeling concern for someone without sharing their state, and from compassion, which adds the motivation to help. High empathy without any regulation is not automatically useful — it can tip into personal distress, a reaction that turns attention inward instead of toward the other person.