What We Talk About When We Talk About Empathy: Toward a Common Lexicon of Empathy-Related Constructs.

Authors

Mark H Davis, Sara Konrath, Fritz Breithaupt, C Daryl Cameron, Jean Decety, Frans B M de Waal, Nancy Eisenberg, Judith A Hall, Sara D Hodges, Suzanne Keen, Birgit Koopmann-Holm, Heidi L Maibom, Stephanie D Preston, Jacquie D Vorauer, Jamil Zaki

Published in

Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Pages 17456916261443519. Sep 25, 2026. Epub Sep 25, 2026.

Abstract

Almost since the term "empathy" was coined, there has been scholarly disagreement about its meaning. Today it can best be viewed as an umbrella term encompassing a host of more specific constructs, almost all of which are regularly referred to as "empathy" in some form or fashion. Promiscuous use of this global label to denote very different constructs has impaired communication among and between scholars, practitioners, and the general public. A team of 15 empathy scholars assessed this issue and created a lexicon for these specific lower-order constructs. In this article we report the result of this effort. The lower-order constructs making up this lexicon are vicarious affect, emotional contagion, emotion co-sharing, sympathy/compassion, personal distress, perspective taking, accurate inference, mimicry, synchrony, projection, and transportation. We recommend that this more specific language be used more frequently and that the umbrella term "empathy" be used more sparingly.

PMID:
42789468
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 26 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.