Empathy

The empathic teacher and the empathic student are important topics for consideration by educational psychologists. Contemporary approaches to empathy conceive of empathy as a social interaction between any two individuals with one individual experiencing the feelings of a second individual. Although there is some degree of correspondence between the affect of the observer and the affect of the observed, the affects are not identical. The process of empathy is currently acknowledged to be contingent on both cognitive and affective factors, the particular influence varying with the age and other attributes of the individual and with the situational context. The model proposed by Norma Feshbach emphasizes the cognitive ability to discriminate affective states in others, the more mature cognitive ability to assume the perspective and role ...