Scientific Definition
Accurately modeling what another person is thinking and feeling — without merging with it.
Plain-English Definition
Accurately modeling what another person is thinking and feeling — without merging with it.
Feynman Explanation
Sympathy is your feeling about their feeling. Empathy is their feeling, accurately reconstructed.
Core Principle
Accurately modeling what another person is thinking and feeling — without merging with it.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Accurately modeling what another person is thinking and feeling — without merging with it.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The skill that makes negotiation, hiring, and leadership work at all.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Sympathy is your feeling about their feeling. Empathy is their feeling, accurately reconstructed.
Examples
- One of Paul Ekman's three empathies; central to Goleman's EQ stack.
- The skill that makes negotiation, hiring, and leadership work at all.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Slow down. Ask the question whose answer you can't predict. Listen for what's behind it.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Slow down. Ask the question whose answer you can't predict. Listen for what's behind it.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Who do you count as fully human, deserving consideration?
Mental discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs or values.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.
Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Adding the word 'because' (with any reason) increases compliance dramatically.