« Back to Definitions Index
In cognitive empathy, an individual consciously adopts another person’s perspective and tries to understand how he or she is feeling or thinking.
It is sometimes referred to as mentalizing or perspective-taking and is the result of trying to understand another’s feelings, and it can be measured by one’s empathic accuracy, or ability to accurately identify the other’s emotions.
References
Goetz, J. L., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2017). The landscape of compassion: Definitions and scientific approaches. The Oxford handbook of compassion science, 1, 3-15.
Synonyms:
mentalizing, perspective-taking