Empathy

Empathy plays an important role in everyday life: it shapes human relationships, and the loss of empathy, or its deficiency or malfunctioning, contributes to breaking up human connections, and in precipitating conflicts and violence. The aim of this work is to explore the multidimensional aspects of empathy. Looking at empathy as a dimensional concept it is possible to explain why individuals behave differently with certain individuals and contexts, showing more or less empathy or emotional understanding of others and of situations. Hence, this can provide some insights as to why certain individuals, defined as psychopaths, are likely to have very low or zero degrees of empathy: a life at best misunderstood, at worst condemned as selfish.