en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy
1 correction found
They attempt to make sense out of the situation and see it from the person receiving the sympathy's perception.
This reverses Brené Brown’s empathy/sympathy distinction. Brown treats perspective-taking as part of empathy, while she describes sympathy as feeling sorry for someone from a distance.
Full reasoning
Brené Brown’s own materials define perspective taking as an empathy skill, not a feature of sympathy. In Brown’s 2021 Glossary of Key Language Skills and Tools, the section titled Empathy Skills lists: “To see the world as others see it, or perspective taking.” The same document also labels “Sympathy vs. Empathy” as an empathic miss, which means Brown is distinguishing sympathy from empathy rather than assigning empathy’s core skill to sympathy.
Brown says the same thing in later official transcripts. In her Finding Our Strong Ground transcript, she says “the near enemy to empathy is sympathy” and explains sympathy as “not feeling with someone, but feeling sorry for them.” In another official transcript, The Dangers of Toxic Positivity, Part 1 of 2, Brown and Susan David describe empathy and compassion as involving the ability to perspective-take, while sympathy is described as distant (“I’m sorry you’re in pain”).
So this Wikipedia sentence is incorrect because it attributes perspective taking / seeing from the other person’s perspective to sympathy, when Brown explicitly associates that with empathy and contrasts sympathy with it.
3 sources
- Glossary of Key Language Skills and Tools from Dare to Lead
Empathy Skills ... 01. To see the world as others see it, or perspective taking ... There are six common types of empathic miss: - Empathy Miss #1: Sympathy vs. Empathy
- Finding Our Strong Ground, Part 1 of 6 - Brené Brown
The virtue might be empathy. The far enemy is not caring about someone at all, but the near enemy to empathy is sympathy. Not feeling with someone, but feeling sorry for them...
- The Dangers of Toxic Positivity, Part 1 of 2 - Brené Brown
Empathy and compassion is very much about this ability to perspective-take... sympathy is like, “I’m sorry you’re in pain,” but it’s distant.