The notions of empathy and sympathy have a muddled history, and they are often used interchangeably. Recently, efforts at clarifying the difference have focused on empathy first and proceeded to characterize sympathy by contrast. The contemporary philosophical conception of empathy has three aspects. If Sam empathizes with Maria's anger, then: 1) Sam has a representation of Maria as angry; 2) Sam comes to have his empathic experience because of his representation of Maria as angry; 3) Sam's experience involves experiencing a state that is similar to anger.

On most accounts, sympathy differs from empathy by being triggered solely by emotions that are linked with pain and involves—either as consequence or through sharing the other person's pain—feeling sorry for the other person or wanting to alleviate the other person's suffering. The phrases feeling with and feeling for, respectively, are often used to capture the difference between...