One must be careful not to confuse empathy with either sympathy, emotional contagion or telepathy. Sympathy is the feeling of compassion for another, the wish to see them better or happier, often described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially a child or a person in a mob) identifies with strong emotions others are showing and becomes subject to the same emotions themselves. Telepathy is a controversial paranormal phenomenon, which differs in that empathy is based not upon the paranormal but upon sophisticated processing of what is seen and heard in the usual way.
Sympathy is, "I'm sorry for your pain." Emotional Contagion is, "I have lost my self in your pain." Empathy is, "I feel your pain." Apathy is, " I ignore your feeling. " Telepathy is, "I know how you feel because I'm reading your mind."
Try reading very slowly this time.
Hmmm...Wiki, or Webster's unabridged.
Why would I read "Wiki", when I can read Webster's Unabridged.
Again, Websters says that they can be synonymous.
But to each, their own -- source.
BTW, did you make that Wiki entry or was it...some unidentified nobody?
I don't know how that back and forth started between you and the guy over sympathy and empathy, but in actual usage
there is a pretty blurry border between the two. I use both words, but obviously to relate to different situations: they will NEVER be the same because they are different words , with different prefixes. That's one thing that should be communicated to the other guy---it's a not necessarily helpful shorthand in this context to come out with the usual rule of thumb of "sympathy is feeling with, empathy is feeling into."Once you say that you are still at a loss as to the real-life applications
and exclusivity. The fact is that they are used interchangeably , by people who don't really know what they're trying to communicate, or are aware of the nuances of where one begins and the other ends.
Consider how much bad grammar, misspelling, misuse of words, etc. we are exposed to every day---I don't even want to get into how often I hear it from the whole media spectrum of talking heads, who you'd think would know better: we must fight against certifying or sanctifying ANY mistake which is the result of laziness, ignorance, sloppiness of thought, or the intentional "dumbing-down" by what is still fatuously called "education"