This is such an interesting topic to me. Several years ago I was obsessed with this idea of empathy, because I also had serious doubts that it really exists in the way that people talk about it (as a defining human characteristic, but also talked about like it's a superpower).
I think there are sub-types worth distinguishing. For example, I do not like to see videos of other people getting hurt-- I do have an immediate visceral response to this, like cringing from seeing someone's leg break. But I don't know that this is separate from my ability to imagine that happening to myself. I don't think I'd have the same reaction from watching an unconscious person get hurt in a similar way (say, during a surgery)-- does this mean my reaction is empathetic, since it depends on the other person's *feeling* that emotion, and not on just what is happening to their body? Again, can't tell-- watching a surgery, if it were happening to me I'm aware I wouldn't feel pain either.
The main thing I didn't understand (and was skeptical about) is that I think people do react based on their own imagined responses to things. If you say "my Mom died last night" and another person reacts with extreme sadness, but it turns out you had an abusive mom and you were glad she died-- then that's NOT empathy! They are not sensing and responding to your emotions like some sort of magic, they're just imagining their own emotions.
So I suspected that this construct of empathy is a sort of circle-jerk. People have lots of similar emotional experiences (e.g. getting sad if your mom dies), so they feel like it's some sort of superpower when they "pick up on" someone else's emotion in some situation (so this is more like a "situational empathy"). But lots of people who consider themselves super empathetic are also giant hypocrites-- they don't _empathize_ with someone's *lack* of emotion about something, but criticize it. Person 1: "my cat died last night". Person 2: "Oh I am so sorry
" Person 1: "It's OK, pet cats are frequently hit by cars, it is to be expected of having a pet." Person 2: YOU MONSTER. There is no empathy in that exchange. This one I experience fairly often, when people I tell something to have an emotional reaction to something that happened to me, that is way stronger than my own-- just a projection of how they themselves would feel.
A different meaning people use (more like emotion _recognition_): can I *tell* someone is sad by looking at their face? Sometimes. But does looking at a sad face make me feel sad? No, not really-- not without knowing something about why they are sad and having that "imagined" response. It might make me feel *something* (maybe like concern) if it's someone I like, but definitely not sad-- not *the same thing* they are experiencing. For example, if someone looks sad over something I think is stupid, that does not make me (or I think anyone else in the world!) feel sad. If someone starts crying because the ketchup ran out at a restaurant, I am certain these uber-empaths don't feel sad about it either-- they think it's a stupid reaction too.
Another hypocrisy-- these uber-empaths only do this to people they already like, who are in their in-group! People can happily walk by hungry, worried, anxious homeless people without feeling hungry, worried, or anxious. And mental health awareness wouldn't be such a problem if people *actually* had the sorts of empathy they say they do!
I think I started going into a rant there, sorry. Anyway, I share your skepticism about the whole idea.
