Showing posts with label sympathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sympathy. Show all posts

Thursday, 10 March 2016

Terms and definitions needed when one study happiness

In order to understand better my following posts, i decided to start by defining few terms that i will use more frequently, and are close to each other.

Kindness - behavior that involve being friendly, generous or considerate;

Pro-social - term favored by scientists to refer to kindness;

Compassion - literally means "suffer together", it is a feeling that arises when you witness another's suffering and feel motivated to help relieve that suffering;

Empathy - ability to sense on imagine other people's emotions;

Sympathy - means "feel together", feeling close to other's emotions, but without the urge to help as in the case of compassion;

Pity - feeling sorry for someone's suffering, but the observer occupies a place of superiority and look down to the one suffering, while in the case of compassion they are equals.