What We Talk About When We Talk About Empathy: Toward a Common Lexicon of Empathy-Related Constructs
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.
Authors
- Judith Allen Hall (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5840-2895)
- C. Daryl Cameron (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0801-1831)
- Suzanne Keen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0124-0415)
- Sara D. Hodges (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6793-2633)
- Nancy Eisenberg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4780-4538)
- Birgit Koopmann‐Holm (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0819-8862)
- Fritz Breithaupt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8949-2598)
- Jacquie D. Vorauer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0450-169X)
- Sara Konrath (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9182-0095)
- Stephanie Delphine Preston (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2733-6108)
- Jamil Zaki (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0664-2982)
- Jean Decety (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6165-9891)
- Frans de Waal
- Heidi L. Maibom (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0433-9143)
- Mark H. Davis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1108-3898)
Institutions
- Northeastern University (US)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Emory University (US)
- Santa Clara University (US)
- Scripps College (US)
- University of Oregon (US)
- Francophone University Association (CA)
- University of Michigan (US)
- University of Chicago (US)
- Société Francophone du Diabète (FR)
- Institute for Social Research (US)
- University of Manitoba (CA)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Indiana University (US)
- University of Cincinnati (US)
- Eckerd College (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Published
- 2026-09-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916261443519
- Primary Topic
- Empathy and Medical Education
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00