The ability and willingness to care, feel, and take the perspective of others.
Empathy has been mostly studied in the developmental psychology field, scholars such as Davis (1994) emphasize both cognitive and affective perspectives of empathy. Many cognitive theorists argue that empathy is grounded in social understanding, whereas moral and philosophical theorists suggest that empathy refers to an individual’s sympathetic response to others’ suffering (Zahavi & Overgaard, 2012) and deliberate effort to understand, communicate, take up and act based on others’ perspectives (Gair 2011; Hojat 2007).