Empathy and Sympathy

This is a definition of sympathy I found on Google: "feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune."

This is a definition of empathy I found on Google too: "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."

-When you have sympathy for someone you feel sorry for them, when you empathize with someone you understand their pain and feel what they are going through but you don't necessarily "pity" them.

-I don't agree with people who owned slaves a long time ago, but I understand that they were just doing what was normal at that time and they weren't doing anything that was "wrong."

-It helps for us as students to be able to step into the shoes of the people in the past and get inside their heads so we can understand why they did certain things.

This shows empathy because these people are looking inside of each others heads and understanding each other.