Empathy vs. Sympathy

So I have started to research my subject for the presentations next week. I'm trying to find time between the other tasks to do as much prep-work on this as possible. know I'm gong to be busy as soon as the animation-process starts, especially since I'm also trying to learn Maya at the same time. (I know, what was I thinking.. Hehe. I think it will end up being worth it in the end though!)

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So, for my presentation I got "Creating empathy not sympathy", so today I have tried to find the best way to explain this, because it seems that sympathy and empathy are two of the most common misunderstood terms in the English language and they are often used as synonyms. (Which is wrong).

The simplest way of explaining Empathy vs. Sympathy is that sympathy means feeling FOR someone
and empathy is feeling WITH someone.

Both sympathy and empathy are acts of feelings, but you only actually feel something when you empathize with someone. You can feel sorry for someone (sympathy), but that does not necessarily mean you that you understand what the person is going through emotionally.

So there is a big difference between the two.

Ed Hooks describes empathy and sympathy in his book " Acting for Animators":

Sympathy: You feel sorry for someone.
Empathy: You share the feeling of sorrow, You identify with it.

For example; a husband and wife are standing in the kitchen making dinner. The husband suddenly cuts his finger while chopping onions. The wife walks over to make sure he's okay.
- She identifies with his emotional reaction to the injury.

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He also refers to one of Charlie Chaplin's films, "The Gold Rush" when explaining the subject:

When Chaplin's character the LittleTramp got his foot stuck in a bucket he tried to shake it off - but he would look around too see if anybody was looking at him, he was afraid someone might notice him - which would be embarrassing.
As an audience we emphasize with him, we identify with the feeling of embarrassment because we have all got our foot stuck in a figurative bucket at some point in our life.

- I would love to show the clip to illustrate this, but I couldn't find it anywhere on-line. But the point Ed Hooks explains is quite clear.

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A clip I would like to show though, is RSA animate 's take on the subject and on "The Empathic Civilisation":



This was a very useful video for my research on the subject, and the way it is presented is just fantastic. It's just a man with two markers and a whiteboard - drawing to help us understand what the narrator tells us.

I would like to point out the most useful information I got out of this video.
Again, I need to refer to Ed Hooks once more because; During his Masterclass he pointed out that humans act to survive - From the moment we are born to the moment we take our last breath we "fight" to stay alive. It's primal, it's the most basic of instincts.

In the video they refer to this as "The first drive" - The drive to belong
(an empathetic drive)

I also found the evolution of empathy in humans very interesting.
The short version is:

A Baby:
If a baby in a nursery starts crying, the other babies will start crying.
This is called emphatic distress – built into our biology.

Ca. 2,5 years old:
Children start to recognize themselves in the mirror - mature empathy.

(And when they can identify with themselves, they know that if they are observing someone else having a feeling – they know they are feeling something and that this is because someone else has it. Example: A father steps on a toy-car - the child can emphasize with the feeling of pain.

Around 8 years old:
A child learns about birth and death. They learn where they came from, they have one and only life and that it is fragile.

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A lot of information to process, but it's very interesting.
I will probably use some of this in my presentation, but since the subject isn't actually to explain empathy, but more showing examples of it's presence in live action and animation
I won't be able to use all his interesting information that I found.
I therefore decided to write a post explaining empathy and sympathy.

- And hopefully you found if not whole, but at least parts of this fairly long post useful.