Sympathy - Origins and Causes

Origins and Causes

In order to experience sympathy there are specific conditions that need to occur. These include: attention to a subject, believing that a person/ group is in a state of need, and the specific characteristics of a given situation. An individual must first give his or her attention to a person/group. Distractions severely limit the ability to produce strong affective responses. Without distractions, people are able to attend to and respond to a variety of emotional subjects and experiences. Attention facilitates the experience of sympathy, and without giving undivided attention to many situations sympathy cannot be experienced.

The need of an individual/group is also considered to elicit sympathy. Varying states of need (such as perceived vulnerability or pain) require unique human reactions, ranging from attention to sympathy. A person with cancer might draw a stronger feeling of sympathy than a person with a cold. The conditions which sympathy is deemed as an appropriate response are organized into individual differences and situational differences.

The ways in which people think about human deservingness, interdependence, and vulnerability motivate sympathy. A person who seems ‘deserving’ of aid is more likely to be helped. A belief in human interdependence fuels sympathetic behavior; this belief is seen as selfish as someone who depends upon you or is related will often result in a personal reward (social, monetary, etc.)

Sympathy is also believed to be based on the principle of the powerful helping the vulnerable (young, elderly, sick), who in turn reaped the benefits. This desire to help the vulnerable has been suggested to stem from the paternalistic nature of humans, in which we seek to protect and aid the children and the weak in their survival. People help others based on maternal/paternal instincts to care for their own children or family when they are in need.

Individual moods, previous experiences, social connections, novelty, salience, and spacial proximity can also influence the experience of sympathy. Individuals experiencing positive mood states and people who have similar life experiences are more likely to produce sympathy.

Spacial proximity, or when a person or group exists close geographically (such as neighbors and citizens of a given country), they will more likely experience sympathy towards each other. Similarly, social proximity follows the same pattern. Members of certain groups (ex. racial groups) favor people who are also members of groups similar to their own. Social proximity is intimately linked with in-group and out-group status. In-group status, or a person falling within a certain social group, is also integral to the experience of sympathy. With this reasoning, it would be easier to feel sympathy for someone with the same religious beliefs than for someone in a religious group that one is not a part of. Both of these processes are based on the notion that people within the same group are interconnected and share successes and failures and therefore experience more sympathy towards each other than to out-group members, or social outsiders.

New and emotionally-provoking situations also represent an explanation for empathic emotions, such as sympathy. People seem to habituate to events that are similar in content and type and strength of emotion. The first horrific event that is witnessed will elicit a greater sympathetic response compared to the subsequent experiences of the same horrific event. This logic says that learning about one gruesome murder would create more sympathy than learning about a genocide.