I empathize when all of the following characteristics are present:

Emotion. I must be in a certain emotional state. If the type of emotion felt by others is not part of the range of emotions that I am able to experience (eg vertigo), I only have a conceptual understanding of their condition. It is not possible for me to have empathy. We speak more of “theory of mind” or “cognitive empathy” according to the terms introduced by the researchers Blair² and Preston³.

• Similarity. It is important that my empathic state is very close to the state of others, otherwise, we will talk more about sympathy. In sympathy, the two emotions are quite distinct. For example, you may feel a lot of jealousy towards someone, which will make me sad for you, but which will not make me share your jealousy.
• The process. It is essential that what I feel is induced by what you feel. Otherwise, it may just be a coincidence. If you and I find each other in front of a movie, we could feel the same emotions, have the same reactions, without being able to speak of empathy.
• L’attribution. To speak of empathy, the emotion that I feel must be totally attributed to you, that is to say, I must know, more or less consciously, that you are in this emotional state because I have already experienced this emotional experience. If I suddenly panic when I see you panicking, it is only “emotional contagion” and not empathy. 

From the beginning of the XNUMXth century, Théodore Lipps explains empathy by “ a mechanism of unconscious and automatic imitation of others, their posture, their mimicry, which makes it possible to reactivate in oneself the memory of an emotion similar to that felt by others “. After several decades of general disinterest in empathy, new discoveries in neurosciences and cognitive sciences have brought to the fore the mechanisms involved in relational experience, the representation of oneself and of others. According to the latter, we would all have the cerebral and mental properties authorizing the knowledge of others, in the sense of the representation of his psychic life, allowing us access to the mental life of others, and therefore the adoption of the “Other people’s point of view”.

In 1996, researchers observed that certain specific neurons were activated in the monkey when it was preparing to perform a motor act such as grabbing food, and that they were activated in the same way when it saw only this same act performed by another. Today, we know that these “mirror” neural systems are involved in relationships between individuals and that they ensure the joint activation of systems specializing in the perception, representation and production of action, of intention and emotion.

Much like imagining and preparing for a motor act, observation activates motor structures, such as the parietal cortex. In other words, to represent the action is to act, but to observe action is also to act. And when we talk about action, we are talking about the whole representational process, cerebral and mental. 

For the philosopher P. Goldie, empathy imposes some knowledge of the person, especially his mental life.

However, several evolutionary psychologists claim that empathy is automatically elicited by ” observation of emotional perceptual cues, regardless of the identity of the person expressing the emotion or the context ».

The latest studies in neuroscience rather seem to validate this last hypothesis.

Psychopathy. Psychopathy syndrome is associated with disorders of empathy. It has been suggested that this inability to empathize with others explains the lack of moral sense in psychopaths but this remains highly controversial.⁷.

Autism. Several studies indicate a deficit of empathy in autism but some others do not mention it. It seems especially that people with autism have a deficit of cognitive empathy and probably a lesser or no deficit of emotional empathy.⁷.

Influence syndrome. The individual would be subjected to the xenopathic influence of an “external force” imposing on him thoughts and intuitions. In reality, the phenomenon would be linked to the real influence that others exert on the mental activity of the individual, because of the structures of empathy. The syndrome therefore arises from an abnormal awareness of normally unconscious processes: those of empathic influence.