Sympathy? Don't You Mean Empathy?

For a brief moment this week we talked about the difference between empathy and sympathy. You are empathetic when you feel for someone and have the ability to connect to what they're are going through emotionally. Sympathy is when you understand and care for other's feelings. In Florence Kelley's speech, she was trying to make the women have empathy towards the children. Sympathy is being able to recognize and share in another's suffering. Kelley believed that the women at the NAWSA could relate to what the children were going through; children, like women, were being treated like slaves and Kelley's speech was a way for her to bring that to attention. Her goal was to have these women want to fight for the children rights by ultimately getting their right to vote. The empathy she evoked from the women relating to the children helped her accomplish this goal. Furthermore, if women had not gone through so much suffering to earn their rights they would only be able to sympathize with the children. This could have been detrimental to the success of Kelley's speech. The women may not have had as much fire at the end of the speech (I imagined them all cheering for Kelley and her speech) and may have not been ready to support the cause. When you are empathetic you have a much stronger connection with someone than when you are sympathetic. I think the video below strengthens this idea and did a good job of describing the differences between sympathy and empathy.