LAUSR

Empathy means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” (1). It is the recognition and understanding of the states of mind, beliefs, desires, and particularly the emotions of others. It is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another's shoes” (2). There is a neurophysiological basis for empathy. Neuroimaging tells us that a person's pain matrix can be activated by witnessing another person's pain (3). We are also inherently able to recognize people's feelings through, for instance, observation of facial expressions or gestures, and listening to utterances (4). The two essential ingredients of empathy are the ability to observe and the ability to imagine another person's world. In this context, empathy is absolutely essential to human interactions at both individual and societal levels. Recently, there has been a public discussion of a societal “empathy deficit.” There is a paradoxical contrast between, on the one hand, the massively enhanced interpersonal contacts through social media and, on the other hand, …