Assessment

EMOTIONAL

Affective empathy - the ability to respond appropriately to people and situations. Affective empathy is sharing an emotional experience - one of feeling together. Aggressive people have almost half the affective empathy of others. Think about if you tend to be indifferent when you see other people experiencing hardships?

INTELLECTUAL

Cognitive empathy - the ability to understand what a person is thinking and feeling without necessarily “resonating” with that thinking or feeling state. It also tends to reduce interpersonal aggression. If you stop listening to other people when you don't agree with them, it could be a sign of a lack of cognitive empathy.

INSPIRED TO “SUFFER WITH”

Compassionate empathy (which is also being motivated to help or engage in social behavior that benefits other people or society as a whole) - This is when you feel moved to help another person or experience their reality. Avoiding helping people who are upset, hurt, or at a disadvantage indicates a lack of empathy.

PHYSICAL

Somatic empathy - the ability to recognize what others are feeling and to physically feel it with them. Have you had a hard time picking up on the emotions of people around you? Is it hard to imagine how you would feel if you were in someone else’s situation? These characteristics are core to empathy.

Radical empathy is the relentless commitment to fundamentally change from being judgmental to accepting even when you don't share the same lived experience. It is recognizing that people’s basic cultural needs come before they can understand and learn from each other.