Toward a Consensus on the Nature of Empathy: A Review of Reviews

Objective: The objective was to provide a synthesis of already synthesized literature on empathy in order to identify similarities and differences among conceptualizations.

Methods: A review of reviews was conducted to locate synthesized literature published between January 1980 and December 2019. Two authors screened and extracted data, and quality-appraised the sources. A total of 52 articles deemed relevant to this overview were synthesized using thematic analysis.

Results: The analysis resulted in four themes found in most empathy conceptualizations. In empathy, the empathizer (1) understands, (2) feels, and (3) shares another person's world (4) with self-other differentiation.

Conclusions: Most writings about empathy begin by claiming that there is far from a consensus on how empathy should be defined. This article shows a developing consensus among neuroscientists, psychologists, medical scientists, nursing scientists, philosophers, and others that empathy involves understanding, feeling, sharing, and self-other differentiation.

Practice Implications: A clarification of the content of empathy may assist practitioners and researchers in avoiding confusion regarding the meaning of the concept, as well as in developing and measuring the relevant aspects of the concept.