The Difference Between Empathy and Compassion

August 15, 2023

What's the difference between empathy and compassion? And how can compassion help you deal with the difficulties and intensities of empathy?

From: Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World — by Matthieu Ricard

Quotes from the book:

The point of view of the neurosciences: emotional contagion, empathy, and compassion

Compassion is here defined by Tania Singer and her colleagues as the altruistic motivation to intervene in favor of someone who is suffering or is in need. It is thus a profound awareness of the other's suffering, coupled with the desire to relieve it and do something for the other's benefit. Compassion, then, implies a warm, sincere feeling of concern, but does not require that one feel the other's suffering, as is the case for empathy. […]
In the affective dimension, I feel something for you; in the cognitive dimension, I understand you; and in the motivational dimension, I want to help you. […]

The researches of Tania Singer and her team have shown that empathy, compassion, and cognitive awareness all rest on different neural bases and thus correspond to clearly distinct mental states. […]

What mental state leads to altruism?

Compassion […] is an altruistic motivation, necessary and sufficient so that we will desire the good of the other and will give rise to the wish to accomplish it by taking action. Compassion is awareness of the other's situation, and is accompanied by the wish to relieve suffering and to procure the other's happiness. Finally, it is not distorted by confusion between the emotions felt by the other and our own. […]

From empathy to compassion in a neuroscience laboratory

The cerebral networks activated by meditation on compassion were very different from those linked to empathy. […]
The network linked to negative emotions and distress was not activated during meditation on compassion, while certain cerebral areas traditionally associated with positive emotions, with the feeling of affiliation and maternal love, for instance, were.

Only empathy gets fatigued, not compassion

From this initial experiment was conceived the project to explore these differences in order to distinguish more clearly between empathic resonance with another's pain and compassion experienced for that suffering. We also knew that empathic resonance with pain can lead, when it is repeated many times, to emotional exhaustion and distress. It affects people who emotionally collapse when the worry, stress, or pressure they have to face in their professional lives affect them so much that they become unable to continue their activities. Burnout affects people confronted daily with others' sufferings, especially health care and social workers. […]

We noted that compassion and altruistic love were associated with positive emotions. So we arrived at the idea that burnout was in fact a kind of "empathy fatigue" and not "compassion fatigue." The latter, in fact, far from leading to distress and discouragement, reinforces our strength of mind, our inner balance, and our courageous, loving determination to help those who suffer. In essence, from our point of view, love and compassion do not get exhausted and do not make us weary or worn out, but on the contrary help us surmount fatigue and rectify it when it occurs. […]

These three dimensions — love of the other, empathy (which is resonance with another's suffering), and compassion — are naturally linked. When altruistic love encounters suffering it manifests as compassion. This transformation is triggered by empathy, which alerts us to the fact that the other is suffering. One may say that when altruistic love passes through the prism of empathy, it becomes compassion. […]

The meditator's point of view

Some people will object that there is nothing altruistic in [compassion meditation] and that the meditator is only benefiting himself by relieving his distress. My first reply to that would be that there is no harm in the meditator freeing himself from symptoms of distress, which can have a paralyzing effect and risk re-centering his concerns on himself, to the detriment of the attentive presence he could offer to the one suffering. Then, and this is the most important point, emotions and mental states undeniably have a contagious effect. If someone who is in the presence of a suffering person feels an overwhelming distress, that can only aggravate the mental discomfort of the person suffering. On the other hand, if the person who comes to help is radiating kindness and gives off a peaceful calm, and can be attentive to the other, there is no doubt that the patient will be comforted by this attitude. Finally, the person who feels compassion and kindness can develop the strength of mind and desire to come to the aid of the other. Compassion and altruistic love have a warm, loving, and positive aspect that "stand alone" empathy for the suffering of the other does not have.

To return to my personal experiment, while I observed that meditation on empathy came up against a limit, that of burnout, on the contrary it seemed to me that one could not tire of love or compassion. In fact, these states of mind both fed my courage instead of undermining it, and reinforced my determination to help others without increasing my distress. I continued to be confronted with suffering, but love and compassion conferred a constructive quality to my way of approaching others' sufferings, and amplified my inclination and determination to come to their aid. So it was clear, from my perspective, that if there was an "empathy fatigue" leading to the syndrome of emotional exhaustion, there was no fatigue of love and compassion. […]

Before engaging in [an upcoming larger] far-reaching project, the researchers carried out a week-long training program with novice subjects who practiced meditations on altruistic love and on empathy. This preliminary study has already shown that, among most people, empathy felt when faced with another's suffering is correlated with entirely negative feelings — pain, distress, anxiety, discouragement. The neural signature of empathy is similar to that of negative emotions. Generally, we know that the neural networks involved in empathy for another's pain (the anterior insula and the cingulate cortex) are also activated when we ourselves feel pain.
Tania Singer and her colleagues divided subjects into two groups. One meditated on love and compassion, while the other worked only on empathy. The first results showed that after a week of meditations oriented toward altruistic love and compassion, novice subjects perceived in a much more positive and benevolent way video clips showing suffering people. "Positive" does not in any way mean here that the observers regarded the suffering as acceptable, but that they reacted to it with constructive mental states, like courage, motherly love, determination to find a way to help, and not "negative" mental states, which instead engender distress, aversion, discouragement, and avoidance. […]

In Richard Davidson's neuroscience laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, the French researcher Antoine Lutz and his colleagues have also studied this phenomenon. They have shown that among sixteen advanced meditators who engendered a state of compassion, the cerebral areas involved in maternal love and feelings of affiliation — like the medial insula (and not the anterior insula as in pain) — as well as areas linked to "theory of mind" (imagining others' thoughts) are activated by listening to recordings of voices expressing distress, which is not the case among novice meditators. These observations confirm the fact that experienced meditators are both more sensitive to and more concerned by others' sufferings and that they react not by experiencing increased distress, but by feeling compassion, and that one can "train" in acquiring these states of mind.

Takeaways

  • Compassion is:
    • "the altruistic motivation to intervene in favor of someone who is suffering or is in need"
    • "a profound awareness of the other's suffering, coupled with the desire to relieve it and do something for the other's benefit"
    • "a warm, sincere feeling of concern"
    • "the desire for the good of the other" and "the wish to accomplish it by taking action"
    • "awareness of the other's situation" and "the wish to relieve suffering and to procure the other's happiness"
  • Empathy is:
    • "feeling the other's suffering"
    • "resonance with another's pain"
  • Empathy can be detrimental.
    • "Empathic resonance with pain can lead, when it is repeated many times, to emotional exhaustion and distress."
    • Burnout is a kind of "empathy fatigue"
    • "Empathy fatigue leads to the syndrome of emotional exhaustion"
    • Empathetic distress "can have a paralyzing effect and risk re-centering concerns on one's self, to the detriment of the attentive presence that could be offered to the one suffering."
    • Because "emotions and mental states have a contagious effect", empathetic distress "can only aggravate the mental discomfort of the person suffering."
    • "Empathy felt when faced with another's suffering is correlated with entirely negative feelings — pain, distress, anxiety, discouragement."
    • Empathy can lead to "negative mental states, which engender distress, aversion, discouragement, and avoidance."
  • Compassion is constructive.
    • Compassion "reinforces our strength of mind, our inner balance, and our courageous, loving determination to help those who suffer."
    • "Love and compassion do not get exhausted and do not make us weary or worn out, but on the contrary help us surmount fatigue and rectify it when it occurs."
    • "One could not tire of love or compassion. In fact, these states of mind both feed courage instead of undermining it and reinforce determination to help others without increasing distress."
    • Compassion "radiates kindness and gives off a peaceful calm, and can [allow you to] be attentive to the other" — thus providing comfort.
    • "Love and compassion confer a constructive quality to approaching others' sufferings and amplify one's inclination and determination to come to their aid."
    • "There is no fatigue of love and compassion."
    • "Altruistic love and compassion" cultivate benevolence and "constructive mental states, like courage, motherly love, determination to find a way to help."
  • "Compassion and altruistic love have a warm, loving, and positive aspect that "stand alone" empathy for the suffering of the other does not have."
    • "When altruistic love encounters suffering" and "passes through the prism of empathy", it "manifests as compassion".
  • Everyone can learn to: (1) "be more sensitive to and more concerned by others' sufferings", and (2) "not react by experiencing increased distress but by feeling compassion."
    • Anyone "can train in acquiring these states of mind."