Social Role Of Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to feel the emotion of other individuals. It is so decisive to social relationships and social behavior. Most theories stated that empathy consist of both affective and cognitive components. Barrett-Lennard define that empathic is an active process of desiring to know the full, present and changing awareness of another person, of reaching out to receive his communication and meaning, and of translating his words and signs into experienced meaning and matches at least those aspects of his awareness that are most important to him at this moment. It is an experiencing of the consciousness is originating and proceeding in the other. This study conclude that therapists recognize that the most important factor of being a therapist

This research states that in the ordinary interactions of life between teacher and student, employee and employer is the most important element to letting the other people know where you are. In the experience of this journal’s researcher, there are many situation that empathic has the highest priority such as when the other person is getting hurt, confused, troubled, and anxious, etc. Then understanding is called for. (Rogers, 1975)

The research suggest the two major roles of empathy. The first role of empathy is epistemological roles. It provides information about the future action of other people and important environment properties. The second role of empathy is social role. It serves as the original of motivation for cooperative and pro-social behavior which affect social communication. Brain imaging studies have shown overlapping brain activation patterns when one feel their own emotions and other got the same emotions. Empathy is an understanding of another person’s

The process of getting to know each other is to involve more than making correct conclusion about such stable and always disposes as their abilities, talent, traits, temperament, long-term motives and goals. There are important component of the empathy process: empathic understanding, empathic expression, and empathic communication. The first component is empathic understanding. It involves the ability to accurately infer the thoughts and feelings of another person. The second component is empathic expression. It involves the ability to express these inferred though and feelings in term that match the actual experience of the other person. The third component is empathic communication. It involves the dialogic or dialectical aspect of the empathy process. The finding state that the desire to establish a positive relationship with the target might provide one motive for attempting to accurately infer the target’s thoughts and feelings. The perception of consistency in the psychological states of other people may be an important basis of accurate trait inference. (Ickes,