Empathy refers to temporarily entering each other's inner world, feeling each other's feelings and experiences without any evaluation, and keenly aware of the changes in the meaning of each other's experiences.

There are three necessary factors to produce empathy:

(1) Ability to distinguish and identify the emotional state of others;

(2) the ability to assume the other party's views and roles;

(3) Emotional experience and reaction ability. Gladstein( 1983) holds that empathy is a multi-stage interpersonal process, including emotional contagion, identity and role-playing.

Extended data

Empathy is extremely important for personal development. Specifically, once a person has empathy, it is easy to gain the trust of others, and all interpersonal relationships are based on trust.

Note that the "trust" mentioned here does not refer to the trust in personal ability (for example, convincing others that I can do a certain job well), but to the trust in personality, attitude or values (for example, convincing others that my starting point is good, so I don't have to guard against or cover up my shortcomings and mistakes in front of others).

In this sense, without empathy, there is no mutual trust, no trust, no smooth interpersonal communication, and it is impossible to succeed in the modern society of division of labor and cooperation.

Trust comes from empathy. To establish a trust relationship, we should gradually show empathy in interpersonal communication and prove that we are trustworthy. This is a long-term deepening process-the more sincere you are to others, the better you are at listening, understanding, respecting or tolerating others, and the more sincere and trusting others will be. After this virtuous circle continues to form, the communication between people will be very smooth.