empathy argumentative essay

Essays About Empathy: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

If you’re writing essays about empathy, check out our essay examples and prompts to get started. 

Empathy is the ability to understand and share other people’s emotions. It is the very notion which To Kill a Mockingbird character Atticus Finch was driving at when he advised his daughter Scout to “climb inside [other people’s] skin and walk around in it.” 

Being able to feel the joy and sorrow of others and see the world from their perspective are extraordinary human capabilities that shape our social landscape. But beyond its effect on personal and professional relationships, empathy motivates kind actions that can trickle positive change across society. 

If you are writing an article about empathy, here are five insightful essay examples to inspire you: 

1. Do Art and Literature Cultivate Empathy? by Nick Haslam

2. empathy: overrated by spencer kornhaber, 3. in our pandemic era, why we must teach our children compassion by rebecca roland, 4. why empathy is a must-have business strategy by belinda parmar, 5. the evolution of empathy by frans de waal, 1. teaching empathy in the classroom., 2. how can companies nurture empathy in the workplace, 3. how can we develop empathy, 4. how do you know if someone is empathetic, 5. does empathy spark helpful behavior , 6. empathy vs. sympathy., 7. empathy as a winning strategy in sports. , 8. is there a decline in human empathy, 9. is digital media affecting human empathy, 10. your personal story of empathy..

“Exposure to literature and the sorts of movies that do not involve car chases might nurture our capacity to get inside the skins of other people. Alternatively, people who already have well-developed empathic abilities might simply find the arts more engaging…”

Haslam, a psychology professor, laid down several studies to present his thoughts and analysis on the connection between empathy and art. While one study has shown that literary fiction can help develop empathy, there’s still lacking evidence to show that more exposure to art and literature can help one be more empathetic. You can also check out these essays about character .

“Empathy doesn’t even necessarily make day-to-day life more pleasant, they contend, citing research that shows a person’s empathy level has little or no correlation with kindness or giving to charity.”

This article takes off from a talk of psychology experts on a crusade against empathy. The experts argue that empathy could be “innumerate, parochial, bigoted” as it zooms one to focus on an individual’s emotions and fail to see the larger picture. This problem with empathy can motivate aggression and wars and, as such, must be replaced with a much more innate trait among humans: compassion.

“Showing empathy can be especially hard for kids… Especially in times of stress and upset, they may retreat to focusing more on themselves — as do we adults.”

Roland encourages fellow parents to teach their kids empathy, especially amid the pandemic, where kindness is needed the most. She advises parents to seize everyday opportunities by ensuring “quality conversations” and reinforcing their kids to view situations through other people’s lenses. 

“Mental health, stress and burnout are now perceived as responsibilities of the organization. The failure to deploy empathy means less innovation, lower engagement and reduced loyalty, as well as diluting your diversity agenda.”

The spike in anxiety disorders and mental health illnesses brought by the COVID-19 pandemic has given organizations a more considerable responsibility: to listen to employees’ needs sincerely. Parmar underscores how crucial it is for a leader to take empathy as a fundamental business strategy and provides tips on how businesses can adjust to the new norm. 

“The evolution of empathy runs from shared emotions and intentions between individuals to a greater self/other distinction—that is, an “unblurring” of the lines between individuals.”

The author traces the evolutionary roots of empathy back to our primate heritage — ultimately stemming from the parental instinct common to mammals. Ultimately, the author encourages readers to conquer “tribal differences” and continue turning to their emotions and empathy when making moral decisions.

10 Interesting Writing prompts on Essays About Empathy

Check out below our list of exciting prompts to help you buckle down to your writing:

This essay discuss teaching empathy in the classroom. Is this an essential skill that we should learn in school? Research how schools cultivate children’s innate empathy and compassion. Then, based on these schools’ experiences, provide tips on how other schools can follow suit. 

An empathetic leader is said to help boost positive communication with employees, retain indispensable talent and create positive long-term outcomes. This is an interesting topic to research, and there are plenty of studies on this topic online with data that you can use in your essay. So, pick these best practices to promote workplace empathy and discuss their effectiveness.

Write down a list of deeds and activities people can take as their first steps to developing empathy. These activities can range from volunteering in their communities to reaching out to a friend in need simply. Then, explain how each of these acts can foster empathy and kindness. 

Based on studies, list the most common traits, preferences, and behaviour of an empathetic person. For example, one study has shown that empathetic people prefer non-violent movies. Expound on this list with the support of existing studies. You can support or challenge these findings in this essay for a compelling argumentative essay. Make sure to conduct your research and cite all the sources used. 

Empathy is a buzzword closely associated with being kind and helpful. However, many experts in recent years have been opining that it takes more than empathy to propel an act of kindness and that misplaced empathy can even lead to apathy. Gather what psychologists and emotional experts have been saying on this debate and input your analysis. 

Empathy and sympathy have been used synonymously, even as these words differ in meaning. Enlighten your readers on the differences and provide situations that clearly show the contrast between empathy and sympathy. You may also add your take on which trait is better to cultivate.

Empathy has been deemed vital in building cooperation. A member who empathizes with the team can be better in tune with the team’s goals, cooperate effectively and help drive success. You may research how athletic teams foster a culture of empathy beyond the sports fields. Write about how coaches are integrating empathy into their coaching strategy. 

Several studies have warned that empathy has been on a downward trend over the years. Dive deep into studies that investigate this decline. Summarize each and find common points. Then, cite the significant causes and recommendations in this study. You can also provide insights on whether this should cause alarm and how societies should address the problem. 

There is a broad sentiment that social media has been driving people to live in a bubble and be less empathetic — more narcissistic. However, some point out that intensifying competition and increasing economic pressures are more to blame for reducing our empathetic feelings. Research and write about what experts have to say and provide a personal touch by adding your experience. 

Acts of kindness abound every day. But sometimes, we fail to capture or take them for granted. Write about your unforgettable encounters with empathetic people. Then, create a storytelling essay to convey your personal view on empathy. This activity can help you appreciate better the little good things in life. 

Check out our general resource of essay writing topics and stimulate your creative mind! 

See our round-up of the best essay checkers to ensure your writing is error-free.

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

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Understanding others’ feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?

Senior Lecturer in Social Neuroscience, Monash University

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Pascal Molenberghs receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award: DE130100120) and Heart Foundation (Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship: 1000458).

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This is the introductory essay in our series on understanding others’ feelings. In it we will examine empathy, including what it is, whether our doctors need more of it, and when too much may not be a good thing.

Empathy is the ability to share and understand the emotions of others. It is a construct of multiple components, each of which is associated with its own brain network . There are three ways of looking at empathy.

First there is affective empathy. This is the ability to share the emotions of others. People who score high on affective empathy are those who, for example, show a strong visceral reaction when watching a scary movie.

They feel scared or feel others’ pain strongly within themselves when seeing others scared or in pain.

Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand the emotions of others. A good example is the psychologist who understands the emotions of the client in a rational way, but does not necessarily share the emotions of the client in a visceral sense.

Finally, there’s emotional regulation. This refers to the ability to regulate one’s emotions. For example, surgeons need to control their emotions when operating on a patient.

Another way to understand empathy is to distinguish it from other related constructs. For example, empathy involves self-awareness , as well as distinction between the self and the other. In that sense it is different from mimicry, or imitation.

Many animals might show signs of mimicry or emotional contagion to another animal in pain. But without some level of self-awareness, and distinction between the self and the other, it is not empathy in a strict sense. Empathy is also different from sympathy, which involves feeling concern for the suffering of another person and a desire to help.

That said, empathy is not a unique human experience. It has been observed in many non-human primates and even rats .

People often say psychopaths lack empathy but this is not always the case. In fact, psychopathy is enabled by good cognitive empathic abilities - you need to understand what your victim is feeling when you are torturing them. What psychopaths typically lack is sympathy. They know the other person is suffering but they just don’t care.

Research has also shown those with psychopathic traits are often very good at regulating their emotions .

Why do we need it?

Empathy is important because it helps us understand how others are feeling so we can respond appropriately to the situation. It is typically associated with social behaviour and there is lots of research showing that greater empathy leads to more helping behaviour.

However, this is not always the case. Empathy can also inhibit social actions, or even lead to amoral behaviour . For example, someone who sees a car accident and is overwhelmed by emotions witnessing the victim in severe pain might be less likely to help that person.

Similarly, strong empathetic feelings for members of our own family or our own social or racial group might lead to hate or aggression towards those we perceive as a threat. Think about a mother or father protecting their baby or a nationalist protecting their country.

People who are good at reading others’ emotions, such as manipulators, fortune-tellers or psychics, might also use their excellent empathetic skills for their own benefit by deceiving others.

Interestingly, people with higher psychopathic traits typically show more utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas such as the footbridge problem. In this thought experiment, people have to decide whether to push a person off a bridge to stop a train about to kill five others laying on the track.

The psychopath would more often than not choose to push the person off the bridge. This is following the utilitarian philosophy that holds saving the life of five people by killing one person is a good thing. So one could argue those with psychopathic tendencies are more moral than normal people – who probably wouldn’t push the person off the bridge – as they are less influenced by emotions when making moral decisions.

How is empathy measured?

Empathy is often measured with self-report questionnaires such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) or Questionnaire for Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE).

These typically ask people to indicate how much they agree with statements that measure different types of empathy.

The QCAE, for instance, has statements such as, “It affects me very much when one of my friends is upset”, which is a measure of affective empathy.

Cognitive empathy is determined by the QCAE by putting value on a statement such as, “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision.”

Using the QCAE, we recently found people who score higher on affective empathy have more grey matter, which is a collection of different types of nerve cells, in an area of the brain called the anterior insula.

This area is often involved in regulating positive and negative emotions by integrating environmental stimulants – such as seeing a car accident - with visceral and automatic bodily sensations.

We also found people who score higher on cognitive empathy had more grey matter in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

This area is typically activated during more cognitive processes, such as Theory of Mind, which is the ability to attribute mental beliefs to yourself and another person. It also involves understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives different from one’s own.

Can empathy be selective?

Research shows we typically feel more empathy for members of our own group , such as those from our ethnic group. For example, one study scanned the brains of Chinese and Caucasian participants while they watched videos of members of their own ethnic group in pain. They also observed people from a different ethnic group in pain.

The researchers found that a brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is often active when we see others in pain, was less active when participants saw members of ethnic groups different from their own in pain.

Other studies have found brain areas involved in empathy are less active when watching people in pain who act unfairly . We even see activation in brain areas involved in subjective pleasure , such as the ventral striatum, when watching a rival sport team fail.

Yet, we do not always feel less empathy for those who aren’t members of our own group. In our recent study , students had to give monetary rewards or painful electrical shocks to students from the same or a different university. We scanned their brain responses when this happened.

Brain areas involved in rewarding others were more active when people rewarded members of their own group, but areas involved in harming others were equally active for both groups.

These results correspond to observations in daily life. We generally feel happier if our own group members win something, but we’re unlikely to harm others just because they belong to a different group, culture or race. In general, ingroup bias is more about ingroup love rather than outgroup hate.

Yet in some situations, it could be helpful to feel less empathy for a particular group of people. For example, in war it might be beneficial to feel less empathy for people you are trying to kill, especially if they are also trying to harm you.

To investigate, we conducted another brain imaging study . We asked people to watch videos from a violent video game in which a person was shooting innocent civilians (unjustified violence) or enemy soldiers (justified violence).

While watching the videos, people had to pretend they were killing real people. We found the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, typically active when people harm others, was active when people shot innocent civilians. The more guilt participants felt about shooting civilians, the greater the response in this region.

However, the same area was not activated when people shot the soldier that was trying to kill them.

The results provide insight into how people regulate their emotions. They also show the brain mechanisms typically implicated when harming others become less active when the violence against a particular group is seen as justified.

This might provide future insights into how people become desensitised to violence or why some people feel more or less guilty about harming others.

Our empathetic brain has evolved to be highly adaptive to different types of situations. Having empathy is very useful as it often helps to understand others so we can help or deceive them, but sometimes we need to be able to switch off our empathetic feelings to protect our own lives, and those of others.

Tomorrow’s article will look at whether art can cultivate empathy.

• Theory of mind
• Emotional contagion
• Understanding others' feelings

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Emotions & Feelings — Empathy

Empathy Essays

Hook examples for empathy essays, anecdotal hook.

"As I witnessed a stranger's act of kindness towards a struggling neighbor, I couldn't help but reflect on the profound impact of empathy—the ability to connect with others on a deeply human level."

Rhetorical Question Hook

"What does it mean to truly understand and share in the feelings of another person? The concept of empathy prompts us to explore the complexities of human connection."

Startling Statistic Hook

"Studies show that empathy plays a crucial role in building strong relationships, fostering teamwork, and reducing conflicts. How does empathy contribute to personal and societal well-being?"

"'Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.' This profound quote encapsulates the essence of empathy and its significance in human interactions."

Historical Hook

"From ancient philosophies to modern psychology, empathy has been a recurring theme in human thought. Exploring the historical roots of empathy provides deeper insights into its importance."

Narrative Hook

"Join me on a journey through personal stories of empathy, where individuals bridge cultural, social, and emotional divides. This narrative captures the essence of empathy in action."

Psychological Impact Hook

"How does empathy impact mental health, emotional well-being, and interpersonal relationships? Analyzing the psychological aspects of empathy adds depth to our understanding."

Social Empathy Hook

"In a world marked by diversity and societal challenges, empathy plays a crucial role in promoting understanding and social cohesion. Delving into the role of empathy in society offers important insights."

Empathy in Literature and Arts Hook

"How has empathy been depicted in literature, art, and media throughout history? Exploring its representation in the creative arts reveals its enduring significance in culture."

Teaching Empathy Hook

"What are effective ways to teach empathy to individuals of all ages? Examining strategies for nurturing empathy offers valuable insights for education and personal growth."

Humility and Values

The choice of compassion: cultivating empathy, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

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Poem Analysis: "Any Human to Another"

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The Importance of Promoting Empathy in Children

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Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position.

Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

Empathy-based socialization differs from inhibition of egoistic impulses through shaping, modeling, and internalized guilt. Empathetic feelings might enable individuals to develop more satisfactory interpersonal relations, especially in the long-term. Empathy-induced altruism can improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups, and to improve racial attitudes, and actions toward people with AIDS, the homeless, and convicts. It also increases cooperation in competitive situations.

Empathetic people are quick to help others. Painkillers reduce one’s capacity for empathy. Anxiety levels influence empathy. Meditation and reading may heighten empathy.

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The concept of empathy is used to refer to a wide range of psychological capacities that are thought of as being central for constituting humans as social creatures allowing us to know what other people are thinking and feeling, to emotionally engage with them, to share their thoughts and feelings, and to care for their well–being. Ever since the eighteenth century, due particularly to the influence of the writings of David Hume and Adam Smith, those capacities have been at the center of scholarly investigations into the underlying psychological basis of our social and moral nature. Yet, the concept of empathy is of relatively recent intellectual heritage. Moreover, since researchers in different disciplines have focused their investigations on very specific aspects of the broad range of empathy-related phenomena, one should probably not be surprised by a certain amount of conceptual confusion and a multiplicity of definitions associated with the empathy concept in a number of different scientific and non-scientific discourses. The purpose of this entry is to clarify the empathy concept by surveying its history in various philosophical and psychological discussions and by indicating why empathy was and should be regarded to be of such central importance in understanding human agency in ordinary contexts, in the human sciences, and for the constitution of ourselves as social and moral agents. More specifically, after a short historical introduction articulating the philosophical context within which the empathy concept was coined, the second and third sections will discuss the epistemic dimensions associated with our empathic capacities. They will address the contention that empathy is the primary epistemic means for knowing other minds and that it should be viewed as the unique method distinguishing the human from the natural sciences. Sections 4 and 5 will then focus on claims that view empathy as the fundamental social glue and that understand empathy as the main psychological mechanism enabling us to establish and maintain social relations and taking an evaluative stance towards each other.

1. Historical Introduction

2.1 mirror neurons, simulation, and the discussion of empathy in the contemporary theory of mind debate, 3.1 the critique of empathy in the context of a hermeneutic conception of the human sciences, 3.2 the critique of empathy within the context of a naturalist conception of the human sciences, 4. empathy as a topic of scientific exploration in psychology, 5.1 empathy and altruistic motivation, 5.2 empathy, its partiality, susceptibility to bias, and moral agency, 5.3 empathy, moral judgment, and the authority of moral norms, other internet resources, related entries.

Before the psychologist Edward Titchener (1867–1927) introduced the term “empathy” in 1909 into the English language as the translation of the German term “Einfühlung” (or “feeling into”), “sympathy”was the term commonly used to refer to empathy-related phenomena. If one were to point to a conceptual core for understanding these phenomena, it is probably best to point to David Hume’s dictum that “the minds of men are mirrors to one another,”(Hume 1739–40 [1978], 365) since in encountering other persons, humans can resonate with and recreate that person’s thoughts and emotions on different dimensions of cognitive complexity. While, as we will see, not everybody shares such resonance conception of empathy(some philosophers in the phenomenological tradition emphatically reject it), it certainly constitutes the center of Theodor Lipps’s understanding, who Titchener had in mind in his translation of “Einfühlung” as “empathy.”

Theodor Lipps (1851–1914)was also very familiar with the work of David Hume (see the introduction to Coplan and Goldie 2011 in this respect). More importantly, it was Theodor Lipps, whose work transformed empathy/Einfühlung from a concept of nineteenth century German aesthetics into a central category of the philosophy of the social and human sciences. To understand this transformation we first need to appreciate the reasons why philosophers of the nineteenth century thought it necessary to appeal to empathy in order to account for our ability to appreciate natural objects and artefacts in an aesthetic manner. According to the dominant (even though not universally accepted) positivistic and empiricist conception, sense data constitute the fundamental basis for our investigation of the world. Yet from a phenomenological perspective, our perceptual encounter with aesthetic objects and our appreciation of them as being beautiful—our admiration of a beautiful sunset, for example—seems to be as direct as our perception of an object as being red or square. By appealing to the psychological mechanisms of empathy, philosophers intended to provide an explanatory account of the phenomenological immediacy of our aesthetic appreciation of objects. More specifically, for Lipps, our empathic encounter with external objects trigger inner “processes” that give rise to experiences similar to ones that I have when I engage in various activities involving the movement of my body. Since my attention is perceptually focused on the external object, I experience them—or I automatically project my experiences—as being in the object. If those experiences are in some way apprehended in a positive manner and as being in some sense life-affirming, I perceive the object as beautiful, otherwise as ugly. In the first case, Lipps speaks of positive; in the later of negative empathy. Lipps also characterizes our experience of beauty as “objectified self-enjoyment,” since we are impressed by the “vitality” and “life potentiality” that lies in the perceived object (Lipps 1906, 1903 a,b. For the contemporary discussion of empathy’s role in aesthetics see particularly Breithaupt 2009; Coplan and Goldie 2011 (Part II); Curtis & Koch 2009; and Keen 2007. For a recent history of the empathy concept see also Lanzoni 2018).

In his Aesthetik, Lipps closely links our aesthetic perception and our perception of another embodied person as a minded creature. The nature of aesthetic empathy is always the “experience of another human” (1905, 49) . We appreciate another object as beautiful because empathy allows us to see it in analogy to another human body. Similarly, we recognize another organism as a minded creature because of empathy. Empathy in this context is more specifically understood as a phenomenon of “inner imitation,” where my mind mirrors the mental activities or experiences of another person based on the observation of his bodily activities or facial expressions. Empathy is ultimately based on an innate disposition for motor mimicry, a fact that is well established in the psychological literature and was already noticed by Adam Smith (1853). Even though such a disposition is not always externally manifested, Lipps suggests that it is always present as an inner tendency giving rise to similar kinaesthetic sensations in the observer as felt by the observed target. In seeing the angry face of another person we instinctually have a tendency of imitating it and of “imitating” her anger in this manner. Since we are not aware of such tendencies, we see the anger in her face (Lipps 1907). Despite the fact that Lipps’s primary examples of empathy focus on the recognition of emotions expressed in bodily gestures or facial expressions, his conception of empathy should not be understood as being limited to such cases. As his remarks about intellectual empathy suggest (1903b/05), he regards our recognition of all mental activities—insofar as they are activities requiring human effort—as being based on empathy or on inner imitation (See also the introductory chapter in Stueber 2006).

2. Empathy and the Philosophical Problem of Other Minds

It was indeed Lipps’s claim that empathy should be understood as the primary epistemic means for gaining knowledge of other minds that was the focus of a lively debate among philosophers at the beginning of the 20 th century (Prandtl 1910, Stein 1917, Scheler 1973). Even philosophers, who did not agree with Lipps’s specific explication, found the concept of empathy appealing because his argument for his position was closely tied to a thorough critique of what was widely seen at that time as the only alternative for conceiving of knowledge of other minds, that is, Mill’s inference from analogy. Traditionally, the inference from analogy presupposes a Cartesian conception of the mind according to which access to our own mind is direct and infallible, whereas knowledge of other minds is inferential, fallible, and based on evidence about other persons’ observed physical behavior. More formally one can characterize the inference from analogy as consisting of the following premises or steps.

i.) Another person X manifests behavior of type B . ii.) In my own case behavior of type B is caused by mental state of type M . iii.) Since my and X ’s outward behavior of type B is similar, it has to have similar inner mental causes. (It is thus assumed that I and the other persons are psychologically similar in the relevant sense.) Therefore: The other person’s behavior ( X ’s behavior) is caused by a mental state of type M .

Like Wittgenstein, but predating him considerably, Lipps argues in his 1907 article “Das Wissen von fremden Ichen” that the inference from analogy falls fundamentally short of solving the philosophical problem of other minds. Lipps does not argue against the inference from analogy because of its evidentially slim basis, but because it does not allow us to understand its basic presupposition that another person has a mind that is psychologically similar to our own mind. The inference from analogy thus cannot be understood as providing us with evidence for the claim that the other person has mental states like we do because, within its Cartesian framework, we are unable to conceive of other minds in the first place. For Lipps, analogical reasoning requires the contradictory undertaking of inferring another person’s anger and sadness on the basis of my sadness and anger, yet to think of that sadness and anger simultaneously as something “absolutely different” from my anger and sadness. More generally, analogical inference is a contradictory undertaking because it entails “entertaining a completely new thought about an I, that however is not me, but something absolutely different” (Lipps 1907, 708, my translation).

Yet while Lipps diagnoses the problem of the inference of analogy within the context of a Cartesian conception of the mind quite succinctly, he fails to explain how empathy is able to provide us with an epistemically sanctioned understanding of other minds or why our “feeling into” the other person’s mind is more than a mere projection. More importantly, Lipps does not sufficiently explain why empathy does not encounter similar problems to the ones diagnosed for the inference from analogy and how empathy allows us to conceive of other persons as having a mind similar to our own if we are directly acquainted only with our own mental states(See Stueber 2006). Wittgenstein’s critique of the inference from analogy is in the end more penetrating because he recognizes that its problem depends on a Cartesian account of mental concepts. If my grasp of a mental concept is exclusively constituted by me experiencing something in a certain way, then it is impossible for me to conceive of how that very same concept can be applied to somebody else, given that I cannot experience somebody else’s mental states. I therefore cannot conceive of how another person can be in the same mental state as I am because that would require that I can conceive of my mental state as something, which I do not experience. But according to the Cartesian conception this seems to be a conceptually impossible task. Moreover, if one holds on to a Cartesian conception of the mind, it is not clear how appealing to empathy, as conceived of by Lipps, should help us in conceiving of mental states as belonging to another mind.

Within the phenomenological tradition, the above shortcomings of Lipps’s position of empathy were quite apparent (see for example Stein 1917, 24 and Scheler 1973, 236). Yet despite the fact that they did not accept Lipps’s explication of empathy as being based on mechanisms of inner resonance and projection, authors within the phenomenological tradition of philosophy were persuaded by Lipps’s critique of the inference from analogy. For that very reason, Husserl and Stein, for example, continued using the concept of empathy and regarded empathy as an irreducible “type of experiential act sui generis” (Stein 1917, 10), which allows us to view another person as being analogous to ourselves without this “analogizing apprehension” constituting an inference of analogy (Husserl 1931 [1963], 141). Scheler went probably the furthest in rejecting the Cartesian framework in thinking about the apprehension of other minds, while keeping committed to something like the concept of empathy. [ 1 ] (In order to contrast his position from Lipps, Scheler however preferred to use the term “nachfühlen” rather than “einfühlen.”) For Scheler, the fundamental mistake of the debate about the apprehension of other minds consists in the fact that it does not take seriously certain phenomenological facts. Prima facie, we do not encounter merely the bodily movements of another person. Rather, we are directly recognizing specific mental states because they are characteristically expressed in states of the human body; in facial expressions, in gestures, in the tone of voice, and so on. Empathy within the phenomenological tradition then is not conceived of as a resonance phenomenon requiring the observer to recreate the mental states of the other person in his or her own mind but as a special perceptual act (See Scheler 1973, particularly 232–258; For a succinct explication of the debate about empathy in the phenomenological tradition consult Zahavi 2010)

The idea that empathy understood as inner imitation is the primary epistemic means for understanding other minds has however been revived in the 1980’s by simulation theorists in the context of the interdisciplinary debate about folk psychology; an empirically informed debate about how best to describe the underlying causal mechanisms of our folk psychological abilities to interpret, explain, and predict other agents. (See Davies and Stone 1995). In contrast to theory theory, simulation theorists conceive of our ordinary mindreading abilities as an ego-centric method and as a “knowledge–poor” strategy, where I do not utilize a folk psychological theory but use myself as a model for the other person’s mental life. It is not the place here to discuss the contemporary debate extensively, but it has to be emphasized that contemporary simulation theorists vigorously discuss how to account for our grasp of mental concepts and whether simulation theory is committed to Cartesianism. Whereas Goldman (2002, 2006) links his version of simulation theory to a neo-Cartesian account of mental concepts, other simulation theorists develop versions of simulation theory that are not committed to a Cartesian conception of the mind. (Gordon 1995a, b, and 2000; Heal 2003; and Stueber 2006, 2012).

Moreover, neuroscientific findings according to which so called mirror neurons play an important role in recognizing another person’s emotional states and in understanding the goal-directedness of his behavior have been understood as providing empirical evidence for Lipps’ idea of empathy as inner imitation. With the help of the term “mirror neuron,” scientists refer to the fact that there is significant overlap between neural areas of excitation that underlie our observation of another person’s action and areas that are stimulated when we execute the very same action. A similar overlap between neural areas of excitation has also been established for our recognition of another person’s emotion based on his facial expression and our experiencing the emotion. (For a survey on mirror neurons see Gallese 2003a and b, Goldman 2006, chap. 6; Keysers 2011; Rizzolatti and Craighero 2004; and particularly Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2008). Since the face to face encounter between persons is the primary situation within which human beings recognize themselves as minded creatures and attribute mental states to others, the system of mirror neurons has been interpreted as playing a causally central role in establishing intersubjective relations between minded creatures. For that very reason, the neuroscientist Gallese thinks of mirror neurons as constituting what he calls the “shared manifold of intersubjectivity” (Gallese 2001, 44). Stueber (2006, chap. 4)—inspired by Lipps’s conception of empathy as inner imitation—refers to mirror neurons as mechanisms of basic empathy; [ 2 ] as mechanisms that allow us to apprehend directly another person’s emotions in light of his facial expressions and that enable us to understand his bodily movements as goal-directed actions, that is, as being directed towards an external object like a person reaching for the cup. The evidence from mirror neurons—and the fact that in perceiving other people we use very different neurobiological mechanisms than in the perception of physical objects—does suggest that in our primary perceptual encounter with the world we do not merely encounter physical objects. Rather, even on this basic level, we distinguish already between mere physical objects and objects that are more like us (See also Meltzoff and Brooks 2001). The mechanisms of basic empathy have to be seen as Nature’s way of dissolving one of the principal assumptions of the traditional philosophical discussion about other minds shared by opposing positions such as Cartesianism and Behaviorism; that is, that we perceive other people primarily as physical objects and do not distinguish already on the perceptual level between physical objects like trees and minded creatures like ourselves. Mechanisms of basic empathy might therefore be interpreted as providing us with a perceptual and non-conceptual basis for developing an intersubjectively accessible folk psychological framework that is applicable to the subject and observed other (Stueber 2006, 142–45).

It needs to be acknowledged however that this interpretation of mirror neurons crucially depends on the assumption that the primary function of mirror neurons consists in providing us with a cognitive grasp of another person’s actions and emotions. This interpretation has however been criticized by researchers and philosophers who think that neural resonance presupposes rather than provides us with an understanding of what is going on in the minds of others (Csibra 2007, Hickok 2008 and 2014). They have also pointed out that in observing another person’s emotion or behavior, we never fully “mirror” another person’s neural stimulation. The neuroscientist Jean Decety has argued that in observing another person’s pain our vicariously stimulated pain matrix is not sensitive to the phenomenal quality of pain. Rather it is sensitive to pain as an indicator of “aversion and withdrawal when exposed to danger and threats”(Decety and Cowell 2015, 6 and Decety 2010). At least as far as empathy for pain is concerned, our neural resonance is also modulated by a variety of contextual factors, such as how close we feel to the observed subject, whether we regard the pain to be morally justified (as in the case of punishment, for example) or whether we regard it as unavoidable and necessary, such as in a medical procedure (Singer and Lamm 2009; but see also Allen 2010, Borg 2007, Debes 2010, Gallese 2016, Goldman 2009, Iacoboni 2011, Jacob 2008, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2016, and Stueber 2012a).

Yet it should be noted that everyday mindreading is not restricted to the realm of basic empathy. Ordinarily we not only recognize that other persons are afraid or that they are reaching for a particular object. We understand their behavior in more complex social contexts in terms of their reasons for acting using the full range of psychological concepts including the concepts of belief and desire. Evidence from neuroscience shows that these mentalizing tasks involve very different neuronal areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal cortex, and the cingulate cortex. (For a survey see Kain and Perner 2003; Frith and Frith 2003; Zaki and Ochsner 2012). Low level mindreading in the realm of basic empathy has therefore to be distinguished from higher levels of mindreading (Goldman 2006). It is clear that low level forms of understanding other persons have to be conceived of as being relatively knowledge– poor as they do not involve a psychological theory or complex psychological concepts. How exactly one should conceive of high level mindreading abilities, whether they involve primarily knowledge–poor simulation strategies or knowledge–rich inferences is controversially debated within the contemporary debate about our folk psychological mindreading abilities(See Davies and Stone 1995, Gopnik and Meltzoff 1997, Gordon 1995, Currie and Ravenscroft 2002, Heal 2003, Nichols and Stich 2003, Goldman 2006, and Stueber 2006). Simulation theorists, however, insist that even more complex forms of understanding other agents involve resonance phenomena that engage our cognitively intricate capacities of imaginatively adopting the perspective of another person and reenacting or recreating their thought processes (For various forms of perspective-taking see Coplan 2011 and Goldie 2000). Accordingly, simulation theorists distinguish between different types of empathy such as between basic and reenactive empathy (Stueber 2006) or between mirroring and reconstructive empathy (Goldman 2011). Interestingly, the debate about how to conceive of these more complex forms of mindreading resonates with the traditional debate about whether empathy is the unique method of the human sciences and whether or not one has to strictly distinguish between the methods of the human and the natural sciences. Equally noteworthy is the fact that in the contemporary theory of mind debate voices have grown louder that assert that the contemporary theory of mind debate fundamentally misconceives of the nature of social cognition. In light of insights from the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions in philosophy, they claim that on the most basic level empathy should not be conceived of as a resonance phenomenon but as a type of direct perception. (See particularly Zahavi 2010; Zahavi and Overgaard 2012, but Jacob 2011 for a response). More complex forms of social cognition are also not to be understood as being based on either theory or empathy/simulation, rather they are better best conceived of as the ability to directly fit observed units of actions into larger narrative or cultural frameworks (For this debate see Gallagher 2012, Gallagher and Hutto 2008, Hutto 2008, and Seemann 2011, Stueber 2011 and 2012a, and various articles in Matravers and Waldow 2018). For skepticism about empathic perspective-taking understood as a complete identification with the perspective of the other person see also Goldie 2011). Regardless of how one views this specific debate it should be clear that ideas about mindreading developed originally by proponents of empathy at the beginning of the 20 th century can no longer be easily dismissed and have to be taken seriously.

3. Empathy as the Unique Method of the Human Sciences

At the beginning of the 20 th century, empathy understood as a non-inferential and non-theoretical method of grasping the content of other minds became closely associated with the concept of understanding (Verstehen); a concept that was championed by the hermeneutic tradition of philosophy concerned with explicating the methods used in grasping the meaning and significance of texts, works of arts, and actions. (For a survey of this tradition see Grondin 1994). Hermeneutic thinkers insisted that the method used in understanding the significance of a text or a historical event has to be fundamentally distinguished from the method used in explaining an event within the context of the natural sciences. This methodological dualism is famously expressed by Droysen in saying that “historical research does not want to explain; that is, derive in a form of an inferential argument, rather it wants to understand” (Droysen 1977, 403), and similarly in Dilthey’s dictum that “we explain nature, but understand the life of the soul” (Dilthey 1961, vol. 5, 144). Yet Droysen and authors before him never conceived of understanding solely as an act of mental imitation or solely as an act of imaginatively “transporting” oneself into the point of view of another person. Such “psychological interpretation” as Schleiermacher (1998) used to call it, was conceived of as constituting only one aspect of the interpretive method used by historians. Other tasks mentioned in this context involved critically evaluating the reliability of historical sources, getting to know the linguistic conventions of a language, and integrating the various elements derived from historical sources into a consistent narrative of a particular epoch. The differences between these various aspects of the interpretive procedure were however downplayed in the early Dilthey. For him, grasping the significance of any cultural fact had to be understood as a mental act of “transposition.” (See for example Dilthey 1961, vol. 5, 263–265). .

Ironically, the close association of the concepts of empathy and understanding and the associated claim that empathy is the sole and unique method of the human sciences also facilitated the decline of the empathy concept and its almost utter disregard by philosophers of the human and social sciences later on, in both the analytic and continental/hermeneutic traditions of philosophy. Within both traditions, proponents of empathy were—for very different reasons—generally seen as advocating an epistemically naïve and insufficiently broad conception of the methodological proceedings in the human sciences. As a result, most philosophers of the human and social sciences maintained their distance from the idea that empathy is central for our understanding of other minds and mental phenomena. Notable exceptions in this respect are R.G. Collingwood and his followers, who suggested that reenacting another person’s thoughts is necessary for understanding them as rational agents (Collingwood 1946, Dray 1957 and 1995). Notice however that in contrast to the contemporary debate about folk psychology, the debate about empathy in the philosophy of social science is not concerned with investigating underlying causal mechanisms. Rather, it addresses normative questions of how to justify a particular explanation or interpretation.

Philosophers arguing for a hermeneutic conception of the human and social sciences insist on a strict methodological division between the human and the natural sciences. [ 3 ] Yet they nowadays favor the concept of understanding (Verstehen) and reject the earlier identification of understanding and empathy for two specific reasons. First, empathy is no longer seen as the unique method of the human sciences because facts of significance, which a historian or an interpreter of literary and non-literary texts are interested in, do not solely depend on facts within the individual mind. A historian, for example, is not bound by the agent’s perspective in telling the story of a particular historical time period(Danto 1965). Similarly, philosophers such as Hans Georg Gadamer, have argued that the significance of a text is not tied to the author’s intentions in writing the text. In reading a text by Shakespeare or Plato we are not primarily interested in finding out what Plato or Shakespeare said but what these texts themselves say.(Gadamer 1989; for a critical discussion see Skinner (in Tully 1988); “Introduction” in Kögler and Stueber 2000; and Stueber 2002).

The above considerations, however, do not justify the claim that empathy has no role to play within the context of the human sciences. It justifies merely the claim that empathy cannot be their only method, at least as long as one admits that recognizing the thoughts of individual agents has to play some role in the interpretive project of the human sciences. Accordingly, a second reason against empathy is also emphasized. Conceiving of understanding other agents as being based on empathy is seen as an epistemically extremely naïve conception of the interpretation of individual agents, since it seems to conceive of understanding as a mysterious meeting of two individual minds outside of any cultural context. Individual agents are always socially and culturally embedded creatures. Understanding other agents thus presupposes an understanding of the cultural context within which an agent functions. Moreover, in the interpretive situation of the human sciences, the cultural background of the interpreter and the person, who has to be interpreted, can be very different. In that case, I can not very easily put myself in the shoes of the other person and imitate his thoughts in my mind. If understanding medieval knights, to use an example of Winch (1958), requires me to think exactly as the medieval knight did, then it is not clear how such a task can be accomplished from an interpretive perspective constituted by very different cultural presuppositions. Making sense of other minds has, therefore, to be seen as an activity that is a culturally mediated one; a fact that empathy theorists according to this line of critique do not sufficiently take into account when they conceive of understanding other agents as a direct meeting of minds that is independent of and unaided by information about how these agents are embedded in a broader social environment. (See Stueber 2006, chap.6, Zahavi 2001, 2005; for the later Dilthey see Makreel 2000. For a critical discussion of whether the concept of understanding without recourse to empathy is useful for marking an epistemic distinction between the human and natural sciences consult also Stueber 2012b. Within the context of anthropology, Hollan and Throop argue that empathy is best understood as a dynamic, culturally situated, temporally extended, and dialogical process actively involving not only the interpreter but also his or her interpretee. See Hollan 20012; Hollan and Throop 2008, 2001; Throop 2010).).

Philosophers, who reject the methodological dualism between the human and the natural sciences as argued for in the hermeneutic context, are commonly referred to as naturalists in the philosophy of social science. They deny that the distinction between understanding and explanation points to an important methodological difference. Even in the human or social sciences, the main point of the scientific endeavor is to provide epistemically justified explanations (and predictions) of observed or recorded events (see also Henderson 1993). At most, empathy is granted a heuristic role in the context of discovery. It however can not play any role within the context of justification. As particularly Hempel (1965) has argued, to explain an event involves—at least implicitly—an appeal to law-like regularities providing us with reasons for expecting that an event of a certain kind will occur under specific circumstances. Empathy might allow me to recognize that I would have acted in the same manner as somebody else. Yet it does not epistemically sanction the claim that anybody of a particular type or anybody who is in that type of situation will act in this manner.

Hempel’s argument against empathy has certainly not gone unchallenged. Within the philosophy of history, Dray (1957), following Collingwood, has argued that empathy plays an epistemically irreducible role, since we explain actions in terms of an agent’s reasons. For him, such reason explanations do not appeal to empirical generalizations but to normative principles of actions outlining how a person should act in a particular situation. Similar arguments have been articulated by Jaegwon Kim (1984, 1998). Yet as Stueber (2006, chap. 5) argues such a response to Hempel would require us to implausibly conceive of reason explanations as being very different from ordinary causal explanations. It would imply that our notions of explanation and causation are ambiguous concepts. Reasons that cause agents to act in the physical world would be conceived of as causes in a very different sense than ordinary physical causes. Moreover, as Hempel himself suggests, appealing to normative principles explains at most why a person should have acted in a certain manner. It does not explain why he ultimately acted in that way. Consequently, Hempel’s objection against empathy retain their force as long as one maintains that reason explanations are a form of ordinary causal explanations and as long as one conceives of the epistemic justification of such explanations as implicitly appealing to some empirical generalizations (For Kim’s recent attempt to account for the explanatory character of action explanations by acknowledging the centrality of the first person perspective see also Kim 2010).

Despite these concessions to Hempel, Stueber suggests that empathy (specifically reenactive empathy) has to be acknowledged as playing a central role even in the context of justification. For him, folk psychological explanations have to be understood as being tied to the domain of rational agency. In contrast to explanations in terms of mere inner causes, folk psychological explanations retain their explanatory force only as long as agents’ beliefs and desires can also be understood as reasons for their actions. The epistemic justification of such folk psychological explanations implicitly relies on generalizations involving folk psychological notions such as belief and desire. Yet the existence of such generalizations alone does not establish specific beliefs and desires as reasons for a person’s actions. Elaborating on considerations by Heal (2003) and Collingwood (1946), Stueber suggests that recognizing beliefs and desires as reasons requires the interpreter to be sensitive to an agent’s other relevant beliefs and desires. Individual thoughts function as reasons for rational agency only relative to a specific framework of an agent’s thoughts that are relevant for consideration in a specific situation. Most plausibly—given our persistent inability to solve the frame problem—recognizing which of another agent’s thoughts are relevant in specific contexts requires the practical ability of reenacting another person’s thoughts in one’s own mind. Empathy’s central epistemic role has to be admitted, since beliefs and desires can be understood only in this manner as an agent’s reasons (See Stueber 2006, 2008, 2013. For a related discussion about the role of understanding in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science see Grimm 2016 and Grimm, Baumberger, and Ammon 2017).

The discussion of empathy within psychology has been largely unaffected by the critical philosophical discussion of empathy as an epistemic means to know other minds or as the unique method of the human sciences. Rather, psychologists’ interest in empathy–related phenomena harks back to eighteenth century moral philosophy, particularly David Hume and Adam Smith (See also Wispe 1991). Here empathy, or what was then called sympathy, was regarded to play a central role in constituting human beings as social and moral creatures allowing us to emotionally connect to our human companions and care for their well-being. Throughout the early 20 th century, but particularly since the late 1940’s, empathy has, therefore, been an intensively studied topic of psychological research.

More broadly one can distinguish two psychological research traditions studying empathy–related phenomena; that is, the study of what is currently called empathic accuracy and the study of empathy as an emotional phenomenon in the encounter of others. The first area of study defines empathy primarily as a cognitive phenomenon and conceives of empathy in general terms as “the intellectual or imaginative apprehension of another’s condition or state of mind,” to use Hogan’s (1969) terminology. Within this area of research, one is primarily interested in determining the reliability and accuracy of our ability to perceive and recognize other persons’ enduring personality traits, attitudes and values, and occurrent mental states. One also investigates the various factors that influence empathic accuracy. One has, for example, been interested in determining whether empathic ability depends on gender, age, family background, intelligence, emotional stability, the nature of interpersonal relations, or whether it depends on specific motivations of the observer. (For a survey see Ickes 1993 and 2003; and Taft 1955). A more detailed account of the research on empathic accuracy and some of its earlier methodological difficulties can be found in the

Supplementary document on the Study of Cognitive Empathy and Empathic Accuracy .

Philosophically more influential has been the study of empathy defined primarily as an emotional or affective phenomenon, which psychologists in the middle of the 1950’s started to focus on. In this context, psychologists have also addressed issues of moral motivation that have been traditionally topics of intense discussions among moral philosophers. They were particularly interested in investigating (i) the development of various means for measuring empathy as a dispositional trait of adults and of children and as a situational response in specific situations, (ii) the factors on which empathic responses and dispositions depend, and (iii) the relation between empathy and pro-social behavior and moral development. Before discussing the psychological research on emotional empathy and its relevance for moral philosophy and moral psychology in the next section, it is vital to introduce important conceptual distinctions that one should keep in mind in evaluating the various empirical studies.

Anyone reading the emotional empathy literature has to be struck by the fact that empathy tended to be incredibly broadly defined in the beginning of this specific research tradition. Stotland, one of the earliest researcher who understood empathy exclusively as an emotional phenomenon, defined it as “an observer’s reacting emotionally because he perceives that another is experiencing or is about to experience an emotion” (1969, 272). According to Stotland’s definition very diverse emotional responses such as feeling envy, feeling annoyed, feeling distressed, being relieved about, feeling pity, or feeling what Germans call Schadenfreude (feeling joyful about the misfortune of another) have all to be counted as empathic reactions. Since the 1980’s however, psychologists have fine tuned their understanding of empathy conceptually and distinguished between different aspects of the emotional reaction to another person; thereby implicitly acknowledging the conceptual distinctions articulated by Max Scheler (1973) almost a century earlier. In this context, it is particularly useful to distinguish between the following reactive emotions that are differentiated in respect to whether or not such reactions are self or other oriented and whether they presuppose awareness of the distinction between self and others. (See also the survey in the Introduction to Eisenberg/Strayer 1987 and Batson 2009)

Emotional contagion: Emotional contagion occurs when people start feeling similar emotions caused merely by the association with other people. You start feeling joyful, because other people around you are joyful or you start feeling panicky because you are in a crowd of people feeling panic. Emotional contagion however does not require that one is aware of the fact that one experiences the emotions because other people experience them, rather one experiences them primarily as one’s own emotion (Scheler 1973, 22). A newborn infant’s reactive cry to the distress cry of another, which Hoffman takes as a “rudimentary precursor of empathic distress” (Hoffman 2000, 65), can probably be understood as a phenomenon of emotional contagion, since the infant is not able to properly distinguish between self and other.

Affective and proper Empathy: More narrowly and properly understood, empathy in the affective sense is the vicarious sharing of an affect. Authors however differ in how strictly they interpret the phrase of vicariously sharing an affect. For some, it requires that the empathizers and the persons they empathize with need to be in very similar affective states (Coplan 2011; de Vignemont and Singer 2006; Jacob 2011). For Hoffman, on the other hand, it is an emotional response requiring only “the involvement of psychological processes that make a person have feelings that are more congruent with another’s situation than with his own situation” (Hoffman 2000, 30). According to this definition, empathy does not necessarily require that the subject and target feel similar emotions (even though this is most often the case). Rather the definition also includes cases of feeling sad when seeing a child who plays joyfully but who does not know that it has been diagnosed with a serious illness (assuming that this is how the other person himself or herself would feel if he or she would fully understand his or her situation). In contrast to mere emotional contagion, genuine empathy presupposes the ability to differentiate between oneself and the other. It requires that one is minimally aware of the fact that one is having an emotional experience due to the perception of the other’s emotion, or more generally due to attending to his situation. In seeing a sad face of another and feeling sad oneself, such feeling of sadness should count as genuinely empathic only if one recognizes that in feeling sad one’s attention is still focused on the other and that it is not an appropriate reaction to aspects of one’s own life. Moreover, empathy outside the realm of a direct perceptual encounter involves some appreciation of the other person’s emotion as an appropriate response to his or her situation. To be happy or unhappy because one’s child is happy or sad should not count necessarily as an empathic emotion. It cannot count as a vicarious emotional response if it is due to the perception of the outside world from the perspective of the observer and her desire that her children should be happy. My happiness about my child being happy would therefore not be an emotional state that is more congruent to his situation. Rather, it is an emotional response appropriate to my own perspective on the world. In order for my happiness or unhappiness to be genuinely empathic it has to be happiness or unhappiness about what makes the other person happy. Accordingly, if I share another person’s emotion vicariously I do not merely have to be in an affective state with a similar phenomenal quality. Rather my affective state has to be directed toward the same intentional object. (See Sober and Wilson 1998, 231–237 and Maibom 2007. For a critical discussion of how and whether such vicarious sharing is possible see also Deonna 2007 and Matravers 2018). It should be noted, however, that some authors conceive of proper empathy more broadly as not merely being concerned with the vicarious reenactment of affective states but more comprehensively as including non-affective states such as beliefs and desires. This is especially true if they are influenced by the discussion of of empathy as an epistemic means such as Goldman (2011) and Stueber (2006). However, already Adam Smith (1853) constitutes a good example for such broad understanding of proper empathy. Finally, others suggest that it is best to distinguish between affective sharing and perspective taking (Decety and Cowell 2015).

Sympathy: In contrast to affective empathy, sympathy—or what some authors also refer to as empathic concern—is not an emotion that is congruent with the other’s emotion or situation such as feeling the sadness of the other person’s grieving for the death of his father. Rather, sympathy is seen as an emotion sui generis that has the other’s negative emotion or situation as its object from the perspective of somebody who cares for the other person’s well being (Darwall 1998). In this sense, sympathy consists of “feeling sorrow or concern for the distressed or needy other,” a feeling for the other out of a “heightened awareness of the suffering of another person as something that needs to be alleviated.” (Eisenberg 2000a, 678; Wispe 1986, 318; and Wispe 1991).

Whereas it is quite plausible to assume that empathy—that is, empathy with negative emotions of another or what Hoffman (2000) calls “veridical empathic distress”—under certain conditions (and when certain developmental markers are achieved) can give rise to sympathy, it should be stressed that the relation between affective empathy and sympathy is a contingent one; the understanding of which requires further empirical research. First, sympathy does not necessarily require feeling any kind of congruent emotions on part of the observer, a detached recognition or representation that the other is in need or suffers might be sufficient. (See Scheler 1973 and Nichols 2004). Second, empathy or empathic distress might not at all lead to sympathy. People in the helping professions, who are so accustomed to the misery of others, suffer at times from compassion fatigue. It is also possible to experience empathic overarousal because one is emotionally so overwhelmed by one’s empathic feelings that one is unable to be concerned with the suffering of the other (Hoffman 2000, chap. 8). In the later case, one’s empathic feeling are transformed or give rise to mere personal distress, a reactive emotional phenomenon that needs to be distinguished from emotional contagion, empathy, and sympathy.

Personal Distress: Personal distress in the context of empathy research is understood as a reactive emotion in response to the perception/recognition of another’s negative emotion or situation. Yet, while personal distress is other-caused like sympathy, it is, in contrast to sympathy, primarily self-oriented . In this case, another person’s distress does not make me feel bad for him or her, it just makes me feel bad, or “alarmed, grieved, upset, worried, disturbed, perturbed, distressed,and troubled;” to use the list of adjectives that according to Batson’s research indicates personal distress (Batson et al. 1987 and Batson 1991). And, in contrast to empathic emotions as defined above, my personal distress is not any more congruent with the emotion or situation of another. Rather it wholly defines my own outlook onto the world.

While it is conceptually necessary to differentiate between these various emotional responses, it has to be admitted that it is empirically not very easy to discriminate between them, since they tend to occur together. Think or imagine yourself attending the funeral of the child of a friend or good acquaintance. This is probably one reason why early researchers tended not to distinguish between the above aspects in their study of empathy related phenomena. Yet since the above distinctions refer to very different psychological mechanisms, it is absolutely central to distinguish between them when empirically assessing the impact and contribution of empathy to an agent’s pro-social motivation and behavior. Given the ambiguity of the empathy concept within psychology—particularly in the earlier literature—in evaluating and comparing different empirical empathy studies, it is always crucial to keep in mind how empathy has been defined and measured within the context of these studies. For a more extensive discussion of the methods used by psychologists to measure empathy see the

Supplementary document on Measuring Empathy .

5. Empathy, Moral Philosophy, and Moral Psychology

Moral philosophers have always been concerned with moral psychology and with articulating an agent’s motivational structure in order to explicate the importance of morality for a human life. After all, moral judgments supposedly make demands on an agent’s will and are supposed to provide us with reasons and motivations for acting in a certain manner. Yet moral judgments, at least in the manner in which we conceive of them in modern times, are also regarded to be based on normative standards that, in contrast to mere conventional norms, have universal scope and are valid independent of the features of specific social practices that agents are embedded in. One only needs to think of statements such as “cruelty to innocent children or slavery is morally wrong,” which we view as applying also to social practices where the attitude of its population seem to condone such actions. Moral judgements thus seem to address us from the perspective of the moral stance where we leave behind the perspective of self-love and do not conceive of each other either as friends or foes (see Hume 1987, 75) or as belonging to the in–group or out–group, but where we view each other all to be equal part of a moral community. Finally, and relatedly, in order to view morality as something that is possible for human beings we also seem to require that our motivations based on or associated with moral reasons have a self-less character. Given to charity for merely selfish reasons, for example, seems to clearly diminish its moral worth and implicitly deny the universal character of a moral demand. Philosophically explicating the importance of morality for human life then has to do the following: It has to explain how it is that we humans as a matter of fact do care about morality thusly conceived, it has to address the philosophically even more pertinent question of why it is that we should care about morality or why it is that we should regard judgments issued from the perspective of the moral stance to have normative authority over us; and it has to allow us to understand how it is that we can act self-lessly in a manner that correspond to the demands made on us from the moral stance. Answering all of these questions however necessitates at one point to explain how our moral interests are related to our psychological constitution as human beings and how moral demands can be understood as being appropriately addressed to agents who are psychologically structured in that manner.

Prima facie, the difficulty of this enterprise consists in squaring a realistic account of human psychology with the universal scope and intersubjective validity of moral judgments, since human motivation and psychological mechanisms seem to be always situational, local, and of rather limited scope. Moreover, as evolutionary psychologists tell us in–group bias seems to be a universal trait of human psychology. One of the most promising attempts to solve this problem is certainly due to the tradition of eighteenth century moral philosophy associated with the names of David Hume and Adam Smith who tried to address all of the above philosophical desiderata by pointing to the central role that our empathic and sympathetic capacities have for constituting us as social and moral agents and for providing us with the psychological capacities to make and to respond to moral judgments. While philosophers in the Kantian tradition, who favor reason over sentiments, have generally been skeptical about this proposal, more recently the claim that empathy is central for morality and a flourishing human life has again been the topic of an intense and controversial debate. On the one hand, empathy has been hailed by researchers from a wide range of disciplines and also by some public figures, President Obama most prominently among them. Slote (2010) champions empathy as the sole foundation of moral judgment, de Waal (2006) conceives of it as the unique evolutionary building block of morality, Rifkin (2009) regards it even as a force whose cultivation has unique revolutionary powers to transform a world in crisis, and Baron-Cohen (2011, 194) views it as a “universal solvent” in that “any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble.” On the other hand, such empathy enthusiasm has encountered penetrating criticism by Prinz (2011 a,b) and Bloom (2016), who emphasize its dark side, that is, its tendency to fall prey to so–called “here and now” biases. The following subsections will address these issues by surveying the relevant empirical research on the question whether empathy motivates us in a self-less manner, the question of whether empathy is inherently biased and partial to the in-group, and it will discuss how we might think of the normative character of moral judgments in light of our empathic capacities.(For a survey of other relevant issues from social psychology, specifically social neuroscience, consult also Decety and Lamm 2006; Decety and Ickes 2009, and Decety 20012. For a discussion of the importance empathy for medical practice see Halpern 2001)

In a series of ingeniously designed experiments, Batson has accumulated evidence for what he calls the empathy-altruism thesis. In arguing for this thesis, Batson conceives of empathy as empathic concern or what others would call sympathy. More specifically, he characterized it in terms of feelings of being sympathetic, moved by, being compassionate, tender, warm and soft-hearted towards the other’s plight (Batson et al. 1987, 26) The task of his experiments consists in showing that empathy/sympathy does indeed lead to genuinely altruistic motivation, where the welfare of the other is the ultimate goal of my helping behavior, rather than to helping behavior because of predominantly egoistic motivations. According to the egoistic interpretation of empathy–related phenomena, empathizing with another person in need is associated with a negative feeling or can lead to a heightened awareness of the negative consequences of not helping; such as feelings of guilt, shame, or social sanctions. Alternatively, it can lead to an enhanced recognition of the positive consequences of helping behavior such as social rewards or good feelings. Empathy according to this interpretation induces us to help through mediation of purely egoistic motivations. We help others only because we recognize helping behavior as a means to egoistic ends. It allows us to reduce our negative feelings (aversive arousal reduction hypothesis), to avoid “punishment,” or to gain specific internal or external “rewards” (empathy-specific punishment and empathy-specific reward hypotheses).

Notice however that in arguing for the empathy-altruism thesis, Batson is not claiming that empathy always induces helping behavior. Rather, he argues against the predominance of an egoistic interpretation of an agent’s motivational structure. He argues for the existence of genuinely altruistic motivations and more specifically for the claim that empathy causes such genuinely altruistic motivation. These genuinely altruistic motives (together with other egoistic motives) are taken into account by the individual agent in deliberating about whether or not to help. Even for Batson, the question of whether the agent will act on his or her altruistic motivations depends ultimately on how strong they are and what costs the agent would incur in helping another person.

The basic set up of Batson’s experiments consists in the manipulation of the situation of the experimental subjects (dependent on the egoistic alternative to be argued against) and the manipulation of empathy/sympathy felt for an observed target in need. The decisive evidence for the empathy/sympathy-altruism thesis is always the recorded behavior of the subject, who is in a high empathy condition and in a situation where his helping behavior can not plausibly be seen as a means for the satisfaction of a personal goal. Since here is not the place to extensively describe the details of Batson’s experiments, a brief description of the experimental set up—focusing on Batson’s argument against the aversive arousal interpretation of empathy—and a brief evaluation of the success of his general argumentative strategy has to suffice (for more details see Batson 1991 and 2011). In all of his experiments, Batson assumes—based on Stotland (1969) and others—that empathy/sympathy can be manipulated either by manipulating the perceived similarity between subjects and targets or by manipulating the perspective taking attitude of the subjects. Empathy according to these assumptions can be increased by enhancing the perceived similarity between subject and target or by asking the subject to imagine how the observed person would feel in his or her situation rather than asking the subject to attend carefully to the information provided. [Note also that instructing the subject to imagine how they themselves would feel in the other’s situation, rather than instructing them to imagine how the other feels, is associated with an increase in personal distress and not only sympathetic feelings. (Batson et al. 1997b and Lamm, Batson, and Decety 2007).]

In trying to argue against the aversive arousal reduction interpretation, Batson also manipulates the ease with which a subject can avoid helping another person (in this case taking his place when they see him getting electric shocks). He reasons that if empathy leads to genuinely altruistic motivations, subjects in the high empathy/easy escape condition should still be willing to help. If they were only helping in order to reduce their own negative feelings, they would be expected to leave in this situation, since leaving is the less costly means for reaching an egoistic goal. As Batson was happy to report, the results confirmed his empathy/sympathy-altruism hypothesis, not only in the above experiments but also in experiments testing other alternative interpretations of empathy such as the empathy- specific punishment and the empathy-specific award hypotheses.

Researchers generally agree in finding Batson’s experimental research program and the accumulated evidence for the empathy-altruism thesis to be impressive. Yet they disagree about how persuasive one should ultimately regard his position. In particular it has been pointed out that his experiments have limited value, since they target only very specific egoistic accounts of why empathy might lead to helping behavior. Batson is not able to dismiss conclusively every alternative egoistic interpretation. In addition, it has been claimed that egoism has the resources to account for the result of his experiments. For example, one might challenge the validity of Batson’s interpretation by speculating whether empathy/sympathy leads to a heightened awareness of the fact that one will be troubled by bad memories of seeing another person in need, if one does nothing to help him or her. In this case even an egoistically motivated person would help in the high empathy/easy escape condition. (For this reply and various other egoistic interpretations of Batson’s experiments see Sober and Wilson 1998, 264–271).

Cialdini and his collaborators have suggested an even more elaborate non-altruistic interpretation of helping behavior in high empathy/easy escape conditions. According to their suggestions, conditions of high empathy are also conditions of increased “interpersonal unity, wherein the conception of self and other are not distinct but are merged to some degree” (Cialdini et al. 1997, 490). It is this increased feeling of oneness rather than empathy that is causally responsible for motivating helping behavior (See however Batson et al. 1997a, Neuberg et al. 1997, and Batson 1997 and 2011 for a plausible reply and May 2018, 144–153 for a probing discussion of the relation between empathic concern and oneness). One therefore has to be cautious in claiming that Batson has conclusively proven that the empathy/sympathy-altruism hypothesis is true, if that means one has logically excluded every egoistic alternative in accounting for helping behavior. But it has to be acknowledged that Batson has radically changed the argumentative dialectic of the egoism-altruism debate by forcing the egoistic account of human agency to come up with ever more elaborate alternative interpretations in order to account for helping behavior within its framework. Egoism was supposed to provide a rather unified and relatively simple account of the motivational structure of human agency. In challenging the predominance and simplicity of this framework in an empirically acute fashion, Batson has at least established altruism—claiming that besides egoistic motivations we are also motivated by genuinely altruistic reasons—as an empirically plausible hypothesis. He has shown it to be a hypothesis one is almost persuaded to believe that it is true, as he himself recently has characterized his own epistemic attitude (Batson 1997, 522.) More positively expressed, Batson’s research has at least demonstrated that empathy/sympathy is a causal factor in bringing about helping behavior. Regardless of the question of the exact nature of the underlying motivation for helping or prosocial behavior, psychologists generally assume that in adults and children a positive, even if weak, correlation between empathy—measured in a variety of ways—and prosocial behavior has been established; and this despite the fact that the above aspects of emotional responding to another person have not always been sufficiently distinguished.(For a survey see Eisenberg and Miller 1987; Eisenberg/Fabes 1998, Spinrad and Eisenberg 2014. For a general survey of the various factors contributing to prosocial behavior see Bierhoff 2002).

Regardless of how exactly one views the strength of Batson’s position, his research alone does not validate the thesis, articulated by various traditional moral philosophers, that sympathy or empathy is the basis of morality or that it constitutes the only source for moral motivation. First, nothing in his research has shown that empathy/sympathy is empirically necessary for moral agency. Second, some of Batson’s own research casts doubt on the claim that sympathy/empathy is the foundation of morality as empathy induced altruism can lead to behavior that conflicts with our principles of justice and fairness. One, for example, tends to assign a better job or a higher priority for receiving medical treatment to persons with whom one has actually sympathized, in violation of the above moral principles (See Batson et al. 1995). For that very reason, Batson himself distinguishes between altruistic motivation concerned with the well-being of another person and moral motivation guided by principles of justice and fairness (Batson 2011). Unfortunately we do not always realize this fact when we abstractly contrast moral motivation broadly with egoistic motivation. For that very reason, we also do not realize that we need to be more conscious in “orchestrating” the relationship between altruistic and moral motivations in order to fully utilize the motivational power of altruism for moral purposes (Batson 2014). Finally, the research discussed so far is not relevant for deciding the question of whether sophisticated mindreading abilities are required for full blown moral agency, since Batson understands empathy primarily as an emotional phenomenon. (See Nichols 2001 and Batson et al. 2003 in this respect.)

Within the psychological literature, one of the most comprehensive accounts of empathy and its relation to the moral development of a person is provided by the work of Martin Hoffman (for a summary see his 2000). Hoffman views empathy as a biologically based disposition for altruistic behavior (Hoffman 1981). He conceives of empathy as being due to various modes of arousal allowing us to respond empathically in light of a variety of distress cues from another person. Hoffman mentions mimicry, classical conditioning, and direct association—where one empathizes because the other’s situation reminds one of one’s own painful experience—as “fast acting and automatic” mechanisms producing an empathic response. As more cognitively demanding modes, Hoffman lists mediated association—where the cues for an empathic response are provided in a linguistic medium—and role taking.

Hoffman distinguishes between six (or more) developmental stages of empathic responses ranging from the reactive newborn cry, egocentric empathic distress, quasi-ego-centric empathic distress, to veridical empathy, empathy for another beyond the immediate situation, and empathy for whole groups of people. Accordingly, empathic responses constitute a developmental continuum that ranges from emotional contagion (as in the case of a reactive newborn cry) to various forms of proper empathy reached at the fourth stage. At the developmentally later stages, the child is able to emotionally respond to the distress of another in a more sophisticated manner due to an increase of cognitive capacities, particularly due to the increased cognitive ability to distinguish between self and other and by becoming aware of the fact that others have mental states that are independent from its own. Only at the fourth stage of empathic development (after the middle of the second year) do children acquire such abilities. They do no longer try to comfort themselves, when emotionally responding to another child’s distress—like seeking comfort from their own mother—, or use helping strategies that are more appropriate to comfort themselves than the other person—like using their own teddy-bear in trying to comfort the other child. Only at the fourth stage does empathy become also transformed or associated with sympathy leading to appropriate prosocial behavior. Hoffman’s developmental view is further supported by Preston and DeWaal’s account of empathy as a phenomenon to be observed across species at various levels of complexities related to different degrees of cognitive development. (Preston and DeWaal 2002a,b. For a discussion of the philosophical relevance of DeWaal’s view see also DeWaal 2006).

Significantly, Hoffman combines his developmental explication of empathy with a sophisticated analysis of its importance for moral agency. He is thereby acutely aware of the limitations in our natural capacity to empathize or sympathize with others, particularly what he refers to as “here and now” biases, that is, the fact that we tend to empathize more with persons that are in some sense perceived to be closer to us. (For a neuro-scientific investigation of how racial bias modulates empathic responses see Xuo, Zuo, Wang and Han 2009). Like Batson, Hoffman does not regard the moral realm as being exclusively circumscribed by our ability to empathize with other people. Besides empathic abilities, moral agency requires also knowledge of abstract moral principles, such as the principles of caring and justice. Hoffman seems to conceive of those principles as being derived from cognitive sources that are independent from our empathic abilities. Yet Hoffmann is rather optimistic about the natural compatibility of empathic motivation and our commitment to moral principles. He regards stable and effective moral agency as requiring empathy so that moral principles can have a motivational basis in an agent’s psychology. Within this context, he has lately emphasized a final stage of empathy development or what he calls “witnessing”, an empathic response to the suffering of others that is so intense that we “become fully committed to help”(Hoffman 2014, 82). As he explains—in light of examples from the history of abolitionism, the civil rights movement, serfdom reform in Russia, and various cases before the Supreme Court— it is particularly such witnessing that has contributed towards bending the arc of the moral universe towards justice. Accordingly, and despite our natural limitations in empathizing with others, Hoffman still regards empathy as the “bedrock of morality” and “the glue of society”(Hoffman 2014, 96. Besides Hoffman 2011 and 2014, see also Deigh 2011 for a measured evaluation of empathy in the legal context ).

More recently, such ultimately positive evaluation of empathy’s contributing role in constituting us as moral agents, as agents who address each other from the moral stance, has encountered penetrating criticism, particularly by Prinz (2011a,b) and Bloom (2016). Both emphasize the dark side of empathy, that is, the aforementioned “here and now” biases. More specifically Prinz mentions explicitly the cuteness, salience, and proximity effects—the fact that we tend to empathize more easily with attractive persons, with persons that are in close proximity and only if their suffering is particularly noteworthy— similarity biases and the fact that we tend to be rather selective in choosing whom to empathize with. Empathy is also very easily modulated by a variety of top-down factors that influence our perception of the social world and that let us register social divisions that seem to be prima facie incompatible with the more impartial stance demanded by the moral perspective. Research has documented these biases in a more fine-grained manner and shown that subjects generally “reported experiencing more empathy for the in–group then the out–group targets and more counter–empathy for the out–group than in–group targets”(Cikara et. al. 2014, 120), counter–empathy here being understood as the feeling of pleasure at the misfortune of another (Schadenfreude) or the feeling displeasure at something fortunate happening to another (Glückschmerz). This is particularly true if the other group is viewed to be in competition with one’s own group. Empathy can also be further reduced through various dehumanizing and objectifying strategies, strategies that have certainly employed in the context of the genocides of the twentieth century and the system of racial slavery in the United States (See Fuchs 2019, Kteily and Bruneau 2017). Heightened empathy for perceived wrongs done to members of the in–group can also lead to violent and immoral behavior (Bloom 2016, chap. 5). In addition, empathy tends to focus on the one (particularly if he or she is identifiable) rather than the many, what Bloom refers to as its spotlight feature. Empathy can mislead us particularly in contexts where we need to take into account statistically relevant information when addressing a moral or social problem, such as when thinking about the benefits of vaccination where it is more appropriate to think about the large numbers of children saved rather than empathizing with the bad effects such vaccination might have on one specific child. For all of these reasons, Prinz favors the moral emotions such as anger, guilt and shame as the foundation for morality, while Bloom prefers sympathy guided by reason as a more viable means than empathy to steer us in moral matters.

Here is not the place for a final evaluation of empathy’s contribution in regard to pro-social and moral motivation or moral and pro-social behavior, since this question is still very much the topic of an ongoing empirical investigation. Yet the following observations are certainly justified in light of the empirical evidence so far and might help to further clarify the debate. First, it seems to be pretty well established that however one defines our natural capacity for empathy, it is on its own not sufficient to keep us reliably on the path of morality (See also Decety and Cowell 2015). Whether that ultimately means that we should think of our capacity for empathy as a limited resource or whether it would be better to think of empathy as a motivated phenomenon and its limitations as being due to our reluctance to activate that capacity (Zaki 2014), is certainly another intriguing question for further empirical inquiry. One might also wonder why we should expect that the emotions such as sympathy and anger, which Bloom and Prinz point to, are less prone to bias and less affected by a universal human tendency to favor the in–group. Certainly sympathy within the context of Buddhism, to which Bloom appeals to is a highly regulated emotion, controlled through mindfulness practices or meditation and guided by an intellectual grasp about the detriments of various forms of attachment to this world. Persson and Savulescu (2018) therefore suggest that rather than giving up on empathy completely one should reform empathy by regulating it through one’s reflective capacities in light of our knowledge of its natural shortcomings or focus one’s empathy (cognitive and affective) particularly on another person’s concerns for his or her well-being as such empathy includes sympathy for the other (Simmons 2014). Such suggestions are also very much in line with proposals by David Hume and Adam Smith, who suggested already in the eighteenth century that we need to regulate empathy with the help of certain corrective mechanisms such as “some steady and general points of view” or the perspective of the“impartial spectator” in order to compensate for empathy’s limited scope. (For a good analysis of the philosophical discussion about empathy/sympathy in the eighteenth century see Frazer 2010).

Most importantly, in order to evaluate the empirical discussion about empathy’s role for morality, one needs to be very sensitive to how researchers define and measure empathy in arguing for and against empathy’s relation to moral motivation or moral judgment. Prinz and Bloom are quite explicit in defining empathy merely as an affective phenomenon, as our ability to feel what the other person feels. Evidence suggests indeed that merely sharing another person’s emotion empathically does not increase our concern or motivation for moral or pro-social action. Interestingly, however, perspective–taking and empathic concern/sympathy, which have always been seen as an integral part of empathy-related phenomena, are a slightly different matter. They do seem to be positively related to cooperation and charitable giving (Jordon et. al. 2016), to reducing prejudices against particular groups (Galinski and Morowitz 2011), and to an increase in one’s sensitivity to injustices done to others (Decety and Yoder 2015). Yet even here further research is needed as the effects of such perspective–taking could be modulated by the power differential between groups. It has, for example, been shown that in active intergroup conflicts, positive intergroup interaction can increase empathy for the other group. Yet within such contexts, taking the perspective of a person from the other group while interacting with them might also hinder the development of intergroup empathy if the dominant group is reminded through such perspective–taking of how they might be viewed by the non-dominant group. Even perspective taking by the non–dominant group might increase rather than decrease established negative stereotypes in thinking about the other group (Cikara et. al. 2014). It seems more effective if the non–dominant group is asked to articulate the difficulties of their lives (perspective–giving) and the dominant group is asked to translate that description into their own words (perspective–taking), even if the positive effects of such interaction is relatively short-lived (Bruneau and Saxe 2012).

So far, this entry has discussed mainly research exploring the relation between empathy and prosocial/moral behavior or motivation. Other important areas for considering empathy’s role in moral matters have to do with addressing the questions of how and whether empathy contributes to our ability to distinguish between moral and conventional norms, to the making of moral judgments, and how empathy can be appealed to in explicating the normative authority of such judgments. In considering the first question, psychologists and philosophers have generally followed Turiel in understanding moral norms as expressing concerns for “rights, justice, and the welfare of other people” (Turiel 1983, 3) and as having a very specific “signature response patterns” (Kelly et. al. 2007) associated with it. Moral norms are generally regarded to be more important than conventional norms in that their normative validity is conceived as being independent of social authority or specific social practices and agreements. Their scope is also judged to be much broader—they are thought of to be valid in other countries, for example—, and violation of moral norms is generally understood to be a more serious offense than the violation of other norms. Notice however that in distinguishing between moral and conventional norms subjects do not necessarily associate a strict universality in the Kantian sense with moral norms and view them as applicable to all rational beings. Indeed there is some evidence that 6–9 year old children, for example, view the moral/conventional distinction as being fully applicable only to behavior of individuals in the in-group and view prescription against harming members of the out-group to be more like conventional norms (Rhodes and Chalik 2013). Accordingly, the fact that empathy shows considerable in-group bias, as discussed above, does not automatically count as evidence against it playing a role in allowing humans to distinguish between moral and conventional norms within a social context.

Of central importance for assessing the role of empathy for grasping the moral/conventional distinction has been the research on the nature of psychopathy and autism. Both pathologies are seen as involving deficits in different dimensions of empathy but only psychopaths have great difficulties in living up to moral standards of their societies and only they were originally thought of as having difficulties in appropriately distinguishing between moral and conventional norms (Blair 1995 and 1996). More specifically, psychopaths show a selective deficit in affective or emotional empathy particularly in “processing fearful, sad, and possibly disgusted facial expressions”(Blair 2010, 710). In contrast to persons with autism they however do not show similar deficits in perspective taking or theory of mind capacities. In his 1995 article, Blair therefore blames the absence of what he calls the Violence Inhibition Mechanism(VIM) that allows us to respond appropriately to the observed distress cues in others for the psychopaths’ moral deficits and their inability to draw the moral/conventional distinction. In his later work, he speaks more broadly of a dysfunction of our Integrated Emotion System (IES), caused by a deficit in the amygdala to properly represent negative emotions. (Blair, Mitchel, and Blair 2005, for a recent survey regarding the very specific deficit of psychopaths in feeling and recognizing fear see also Marsh 2014). Yet one has to tread very carefully in drawing definite conclusions about the role of empathy for morality from the empirical research about psychopathy. The results of the empirical investigations are far from unified and do not point in the same direction (For a concise survey see Maibom 2017). Newer studies, for example, seem to suggest that psychopaths, as measured by the overall score of the revised psychopathy checklist (PCL–R), are able to understand the distinction between moral and conventional norms if tested under a forced choice paradigm (Aharoni et. al 2012.)Nevertheless even that study seems to allow for the possibility that emotional deficits are responsible for the psychopath’s shortcomings in accurately drawing the distinction since they are somewhat linked to the affective and antisocial facets of the PCL–R. Given the inconsistent results of the various studies, other researchers prefer to view a psychopath’s immorality not as a specific deficit in empathy, but understand it to be caused by their general inability to feel strong emotions, by their general coldheartedness, or even by shortcomings in their rational and prudential capacities. From that perspective, a psychopath might understand in an abstract manner that certain things are morally wrong to do, but he just does not care for morality, the welfare of another person, or even for himself. (For further discussion see Maibom 2005 and 2009, Nichols 2004, and Prinz 2011a,b). Similar considerations apply also to research regarding subjects with autism. Kennett (2002)has argued that evidence from autistic individuals, whose imaginative role-play and thus empathic capacities are diminished, does not support the claim that empathy is necessary for moral agency. Yet in her arguments she only considers the fact that persons with autism have difficulties with putting themselves in another person’s shoes but does not consider that they seem to have some ability to pick up on the emotional states of other people as revealed by their facial expressions. Moreover, while autistic subjects in general can distinguish between moral and conventional norms they do seem to lack a certain flexibility in evaluating the seriousness of the violation of a moral norm when they reflect on moral dilemmas or when they encounter an accidental or unintentional violation of such norms. (See McGeer 2008, Zalla et. al 2011, but see also Kennett 2011 and Leslie et. al. 2006 in response).

Philosophers have however not been merely be interested in appealing to empathy for explicating the psychological basis for our thinking that certain norms have moral status. Within the general framework of moral sentimentalism, which sees morality generally linked to our emotional responsiveness to the actions of others and ourselves, they have also appealed to empathy in explicating more generally the nature of moral judgments (see also Kauppinen 2014 and 2017a). David Hume, for example, has suggested that moral judgments are based on peculiar sentiments of moral approbations and disapprobation, which are causally mediated by our ability to empathize— or what he called sympathy— with the pain and pleasures of others (See also Sayre-Mcord 1994 and 2014). More specifically, sentiments of moral approbations arise in response to our ability to think about and enliven the pleasure and pain that others feel with the help of our empathic/sympathetic capacities when we consider the benefits (the pleasure and pain) which a person’s character traits and actions provide to himself and others. Yet Hume was already quite aware of some of the above mentioned limitations and biases of our natural willingness and capacity to empathize with others. Accordingly, he insisted that sentiments of approbations can only be conceived of as moral approbation if empathy/sympathy is regulated or corrected by what he refers to as “steady and general points of view” (Hume 1739–40 [1978], 581/2) so that our capacity for sympathy enables us to “touch a string, to which all mankind have an accord and symphony” (Hume 1748 [1983], 75). There are certainly a number of issues that can be raised in response to Hume’s proposal. Suffice it here to point out that it is difficult to fully understand how Hume is ultimately able distinguish between judgments about something being bad and something being morally wrong. Certainly natural disasters also cause us to sympathize/empathize with the pain it causes others, yet such sympathy is not mediating any judgments about the moral impermissibility of natural disasters. Hume himself might have thought to have solved this problem by thinking that sentiments of moral approbation have a peculiar or distinct character (see in this respect particularly Debes 2012). Yet pointing to the peculiarity of such sentiments seems to be rather unsatisfying for answering this challenge.

Michael Slote, one of the main contemporary proponents of the claim that empathy plays a constitutive role for moral judgments, does not follow Hume in thinking that empathy plays a moral role in allowing us to pick up on a subject’s pleasure and pain. Rather Slote, who also has been influenced by a feminist ethics of care (Slote 2007, 2010), suggests that empathy is central for moral approval in that we as spectators empathically pick up on whether or not an agent acted out of empathic concern for another subject. Moral approval of an action consists then in the subsequent reflective feeling of warmth when empathizing with an agent’s empathic concern, while moral disapproval is equivalent with a reflective feeling of chill due to our recognition that the agent acted without any empathic concern. Actions are then judged to be morally right or wrong in terms of whether they can be conceived of the actions of an agent we would morally approve of in that they are actions done out of empathic concern. Notice also that while Slote does regard empathy in the above sense to be constitutive of moral approval only if it is fully or well–developed, he does not follow Hume in thinking that empathy needs to be regulated in order to correct for some of its natural partiality. Indeed Slote thinks that this is a virtue of his account since he regards such partiality reflected in our moral intuitions. For example, he thinks that we have a greater moral obligation to help the child in front of us or members of our family rather than people who are more removed from us. Slote certainly deserves credit for reviving the debate about the role of empathy for morality in contemporary metaethics. Yet his conception of the relation between empathy and morality has also encountered some skepticism. First of all, it is questionable that only motivations of empathic concern, rather than the thought that one is doing the right thing, constitute proper moral motivations. Second, in light of the above research on empathy’s bias and natural shortcomings, it is rather questionable to maintain that all aspects of empathy’s partiality are sanctioned by our our moral intuitions. It is therefore hard to see how empathy’s moral role can be justified without appeal to some form of corrective mechanism. Third, phenomenologically speaking, moral disapproval is not necessarily based on a “chilly” feeling. At times we are rather upset and angry in encountering violations of moral norms. Finally, Slote’s proposed empathic mechanism underlying moral approval seems to lack a certain psychological plausibility. For Slote, we approve of an action because we recreate the empathic concern that the agent feels towards his or her subjects and that causes us to feel warmly towards the agent. Yet if a positive moral judgment of an actions is tied to providing us with the motivation or with a reason for doing a specific action, it is hard to see how moral approval, consisting in us feeling warmly towards the agent, should help us accomplish this. If Slote is right, it would rather provide us with a reason for merely praising or being nice towards the agent (See D’Arms 2011, Kauppinen 2014 and 2017a, Prinz 2001a,b, and Stueber 2011c).

There is one additional element to consider when debating empathy’s contribution to morality. Philosophers are not merely interested in answering factual and causal questions of why we care about morality, what causal role empathy plays in this respect, or how empathy causally contributes in allowing us to distinguish between moral and conventional norms and judging what is morally right or wrong. Rather they are also interested in genuinely normative questions in attempting to answer the question of why we should care about morality and why we should regard moral judgments as making normative demands on us. In morally blaming other persons we do assume that we evaluate their behavior according to standards that they as persons are in some sense already committed to. We assume that these standards are their own standards rather than standards that we impose from an external perspective on them. Unfortunately, even if one would agree with either David Hume or Michael’s Slote’s account of the causal role of empathy outlined above, it is doubtful that their account would help us to answer the genuinely normative question appropriately. Why exactly should I take a particular emotional reaction of another person towards me and my action, even if it is a feeling of warmth caused by empathy, as something that is normatively relevant for me. Certainly we all like to be liked and try to fit in with our peer group, but then moral judgments would be nothing more than a glorified form of peer pressure. Hume might respond that we should take them seriously because they are responses from the general point of view, but that in itself seems to be begging the question of why such perspective is articulating the appropriate normative standard for judging our behavior and character. This is also exactly the reason, why philosophers with Kantian inclinations have been in general skeptical about moral sentimentalism and positions that think of empathy as a foundation of morality (for a nice explication of Kant’s critical view of sympathy see Deimling 2017). Contemporary “Kantians” do at times, however, admit that empathy and perspective taking is epistemically relevant for moral deliberations, even if it is not solely constitutive for moral agency (Deigh 1996 and 2018; Darwall 2006, Shermann 1998, For a review see also Oxley 2011). Interestingly, philosophers sympathetic to moral sentimentalism have particularly turned to Adam Smith for inspiration in developing empathy based accounts of morality and in responding to the above normativity problem. In contrast to Hume, Smith conceives of empathy/sympathy not merely as the enlivening of a perceived emotion or feeeling but as imaginative perspective–taking. In taking up another person’s perspective we put ourselves in his situation and imagine how he would respond to the situation, how he would think and feel about it. If in bringing another person’s point of view “home to ourselves” in this manner, we recognize that we ourselves might have felt or acted like the other person, then we approve of the other person’s sentiment or action, otherwise we disapprove. Moreover, such approval constitutes moral approval if we have empathized with the other from the perspective of the impartial spectator, a perspective that Smith, like Hume, appeals to in order to correct for empathy’s natural shortcomings. More importantly, some authors think that within the Smithian framework we also find some answers to the normativity problem. They think that the impartial spectator perspective can be recast as an implicit commitment of our ordinary practice of making sense of each other as rational and emotional creatures with the help of empathic perspective taking (Stueber 2017) or argue that Smithian perspective–taking involves quasi-Kantian commitments to the dignity of a person, including his or her affective dimension. (Debes 2017, but see also Fricke 2005, Kauppinen 2017b, and Roughley 2018).

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• Lamm, C., D. D. Batson, and J. Decety, 2007. “The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-Taking and Cognitive Appraisal,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 19: 42–58.
• Lanzoni, S., 2018. Empathy: A History , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Leslie, A.M., R. Mallon, and J.A. DiCorcia, 2006. “Transgressors, Victims, and Cry Babies: Is Basic Moral Judgment Spared in Autism?,” Social Neuroscience , 1: 270–283.
• Lipps, T., 1903a. “Einfühlung, Innere Nachahmung und Organempfindung,” Archiv für gesamte Psychologie 1: 465–519; translated as “Empathy, Inner Imitation and Sense-Feelings,” in A Modern Book of Esthetics , 374–382. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.
• –––, 1903b. Aesthetik (Volume 1), Hamburg: Voss Verlag.
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• ––– (ed.), 2014. Morality and Empathy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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• Makkreel, R., 2000. “From Simulation to Structural Transposition: A Diltheyan Critique of Empathy and Defense of Verstehen ”. In Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences , H.H. Kögler and K. Stueber (eds.), Boulder: Westview Press, 181–193.
• Marsh, A., 2014. “Empathy and Moral Deficits in Psychopaths,” in Empathy and Morality , H. Maibom (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 138–154.
• Matravers, D., 2018. “ The Object of Empathic Emotions,” in Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Challenges , D. Matravers and A. Waldow (eds.), New York: Routledge, 60–73.
• May, J., 2018. Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• May, L., M. Friedman, and A. Clark, 1996. Mind and Morals , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• McGeer, V., 2008. “Varieties of Moral Agency: Lessons from Autism,” in Moral Psychology (Volume 3), W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 227–248.
• Mead. G.H., 1934. Mind, Self, and Society , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Mehrabian, A. and N. Epstein, 1972. “A Measure of Emotional Empathy,” Journal of Personality , 40: 525–543.
• Mehrabian, A., A.L. Young, and S. Sato, 1988. “Emotional Empathy and Associated Individual Differences,” Current Psychology : Research and Review , 7: 221–240.
• Meltzoff, A., and R. Brooks, 2001. “‘Like Me’ as a Building Block for Understanding Other Minds: Bodily Acts, Attention, and Intention,” in Intentions and Intentionality , ed. B. Malle, L. Moses and D. Baldwin, 171–191. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Nichols, S., 2001. “Mindreading and the Cognitive Architecture underlying Altruistic Motivation,” Mind & Language , 16: 425–455.
• –––, 2004. Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundation of Moral Judgment , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nichols, S., and S. Stich, 2003. Mindreading , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Neuberg, S.L., R. Cialdini, S.L. Brown, C. Luce, and B. Sagarin, 1997. “Does Empathy Lead to Anything More Than Superficial Helping?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 510–516.
• Oxley, J.C., 2011. The Moral Dimensions of Empathy: Limits and Applications in Ethical Theory and Practice , Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Persson, I., and J. Savulescu, 2018. “The Moral Importance of Reflective Empathy,” Neuroethics , 11: 183–193.
• Prandl, A., 1910. Die Einfühlung , Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth.
• Preston, S., and F. de Waal, 2002a. “Empathy: Its Ultimate and Proximate Bases,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 25: 1–72.
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• Prinz, J., 2011a. “Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?” in Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives , A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 211–229.
• –––, 2011b. “Against Empathy,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy , 49 (Spindel Supplement): 214–233.
• Ravenscroft, I., 1998. “What is it Like to be Someone Else? Simulation and Empathy,” Ratio , 11: 170–185.
• Rhodes, M. and L. Chalik, 2013. “Social Categories as Markers of Intrinsic Interpersonal Obligations,” Psychological Science , 26: 999–1006.
• Rifkin, J., 2009. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis , New York: Tarcher/Penguin.
• Rizzolatti, G. and L. Craighero, 2004. “The Mirror Neuron System,” Annual Review Neuroscience , 27: 169–192.
• Rizzolatti, G. and C. Sinigaglia, 2008. Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2016. “The Mirror Mechanism: A Basic Principle of Brain Function,” Nature Review Neuroscience , 17: 757–765.
• Rogers, C., 1959. “A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relations, as Developed in the Client-Centered Framework,” in S. Koch (ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science (Vol. 3), New York: McGraw–Hill, 184–256.
• –––, 1975. “Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being,” The Counseling Psychologist , 5: 2–10 (Reprinted in C. Rogers. 1980. A Way of Being , Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 137–164.
• Roughley, N., 2018. “The Empathy in Moral Obligation: An Excercise in Creature Construction,” in Forms of Fellow Feeling: Empathy, Sympathy and Moral Agency , N. Roughley and T. Schramme (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 265–291.
• Sayre-McCord, G., 1994. “On Why Hume’s 'General Point of View' Ins’t Ideal—And Shouldn’t Be,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 11: 202–228.
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• Sherman, N., 1998. “Empathy and Imagination,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 22: 82–119.
• Seemann, A., 2011. Joint Attention: New Developments in Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Neuroscience , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Scheler, M., 1973. Wesen und Form der Sympathie , Bern/München: Francke Verlag; English translation, The Nature of Sympathy , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1954.
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• Winch, P., 1958. The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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• –––, 1991. The Psychology of Sympathy , New York/London: Plenum Press.
• Xu, X., X. Zuo, X. Wang, and S. Han, 2009. “Do You Feel My Pain? Racial Group Membership Modulates Empathic Neural Responses,” Journal of Neuroscience , 29: 8525–8529,
• Zahavi, D., 2001. “Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies , 8. 151–167.
• –––, 2005. Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• –––, 2010. “Empathy, Embodiment and Interpersonal Understanding: From Lipps to Schutz,” Inquiry , 53: 285–306.
• Zahavi, D., and S. Overgaard, 2012. “Empathy without Isomorphism: A Phenomenological Account,” in Empathy: From Bench to Bedside , J. Decety (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 3–20.
• Zaki, J., 2014. “Empathy: A Motivated Account,” Psychological Bulletin , 140: 1608–1647.
• Zaki, J. and K. Ochsner, 2012. “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Sharing and Understanding Others’ Emotions,” in Empathy: From Bench to Bedside , J. Decety (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 207–226.
• Zalla, T., L. Barlassina, M. Buon, and M. Leboyer, 2011. “Moral Judment in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Cognition , 12: 115–126.
• Zhou, Q., C. Valiente, and N. Eisenberg, 2003. “Empathy and Its Measurement,” S.J. Lopez and C.R. Snyder (eds.), Positive Psychological Assessment: A Handbook of Models and Measures , Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 269–284.

Further Important Surveys of Empathy

• Maibom, H. (ed.), 2017. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Empathy , New York: Routledge.
• Matraver, D., 2017. Empathy , Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Empathy Argumentative Essays Samples For Students

12 samples of this type

Do you feel the need to examine some previously written Argumentative Essays on Empathy before you begin writing an own piece? In this free catalog of Empathy Argumentative Essay examples, you are granted a thrilling opportunity to explore meaningful topics, content structuring techniques, text flow, formatting styles, and other academically acclaimed writing practices. Using them while composing your own Empathy Argumentative Essay will surely allow you to finish the piece faster.

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Learn How to Write a Perfect Empathy Essay

Are you having a hard time, finding good tips and tricks on writing an empathy essay? Of course, writing it gets easy when you have the proper guidelines. Such as the  professional research paper writers  have for you in this interesting blog post.

Writing an empathy essay is like delving into understanding emotions, seeing things from other’s perspectives, and showing care and understanding. It talks about how empathy shapes relationships, impacts society, and why it’s vital for a kinder world.

No need to fret, as this blog post is like a friendly guide for beginners that will help them understand everything about writing an empathy essay. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is an Empathy Essay?

An empathy essay or emotions essay revolves around the exploration and analysis of empathy as a concept, trait, or practice. It’s about exploring and analyzing what empathy is all about, whether it’s a concept, a trait, or something you have to practice. You know, getting into the nitty-gritty of understanding emotions, different perspectives, and how we can relate to other people’s experiences.

The point of this essay is to show how empathy is super important in relationships, connections between people, and even in society as a whole. It’s all about showing how empathy plays a big role and why it’s so important.

Key elements in empathy writing include a clear definition and explanation of empathy, supported by relatable anecdotes or case studies to illustrate its application. It should delve into empathy’s psychological and societal implications, discussing its effects on individual well-being, relationships, and society at large. Moreover, the empathy essays require a balanced exploration of challenges and complexities related to empathy, such as cultural differences, biases, and the boundaries of empathy in various situations.

Students might find it useful to consider a  professional paper writing service  for an empathy essay due to various reasons. These services often provide access to experienced writers who specialize in crafting well-researched and structured essays. Professional writers can offer a fresh perspective, present nuanced arguments, and ensure the essay meets academic standards.

Why Empathy Essay Writing is Challenging for Some Students?

Writing an essay with empathy can pose challenges for students due to several reasons.

Complex Nature of Empathy

Understanding empathy involves navigating emotional intelligence, perspective-taking, and compassionate understanding, which can be challenging to articulate coherently.

Subjectivity and Personal Experience

Expressing subjective feelings and personal experiences while maintaining objectivity in empathic writing can be difficult for students.

Navigating Sensitivity

Addressing sensitive topics and human complexities while maintaining a respectful and empathetic tone in writing can be demanding.

Handling Diverse Perspectives

Grasping and objectively presenting diverse perspectives across different cultural and social contexts can pose a challenge.

Time Constraints and Academic Pressures

Juggling multiple assignments and deadlines might limit the time and focus students can dedicate to thoroughly researching and crafting an empathy essay.

Expert Tips on Writing a Perfect Empathy Essay

Here are some tips with corresponding examples for writing an empathy essay:

Start with a Compelling Story

Begin your essay with a narrative that illustrates empathy in action. For instance, recount a personal experience where you or someone else demonstrated empathy. For instance:

Example:  As a child, I vividly recall a moment when my grandmother’s empathetic nature became evident. Despite her own struggles, she always took time to comfort others, such as when she helped a neighbor through a difficult loss.

Define Empathy Clearly

Define empathy and its various dimensions using simple language.

Example:  Empathy goes beyond sympathy; it’s about understanding and feeling what someone else is experiencing. It involves recognizing emotions and responding with care and understanding.

Use Real-life Examples

For achieving empathy in writing, incorporate real-life instances or case studies to emphasize empathy’s impact.

Example:  Research shows how empathy in healthcare professionals led to improved patient outcomes. Doctors who showed empathy were found to have patients with higher satisfaction rates and better recovery.

Explore Perspectives

Discuss different perspectives on empathy and its challenges.

Example:  While empathy is crucial, cultural differences can sometimes pose challenges. For instance, what’s considered empathetic in one culture might differ in another, highlighting the need for cultural sensitivity.

Highlight Benefits

Explain the positive outcomes of empathy in various contexts.

Example:  In workplaces, empathy fosters a more cohesive team environment. A study by the researcher found that leaders who display empathy tend to have more engaged and motivated teams.

Acknowledge Challenges

Address the complexities or limitations of empathy.

Example:  Despite its benefits, there are challenges in maintaining boundaries in empathetic relationships. It’s important to balance being empathetic and avoiding emotional burnout.

Conclude with Impact

Wrap up by emphasizing the broader impact of empathy.

Example:  Ultimately, fostering empathy creates a ripple effect, contributing to a more compassionate and understanding society, where individuals feel seen, heard, and supported.

Steps of Writing an Empathy Essay

Here are the steps for writing an empathy essay. You’ll notice that most of the steps are the same as  writing a research paper  or any such academic task.

Understanding the Topic

Familiarize yourself with the concept of empathy and its various dimensions. Define what empathy means to you and what aspects you aim to explore in your essay.

Gather information from credible sources, including academic articles, books, and real-life examples that illustrate empathy’s role and impact. Take notes on key points and examples that you can incorporate into your essays on empathy

Create an outline that includes an introduction (with a thesis statement defining the scope of your essay), body paragraphs discussing different aspects of empathy (such as its definition, importance, challenges, and benefits), and a conclusion summarizing the main points.

Introduction

Start your essay with a compelling hook or anecdote related to empathy. Introduce the topic and provide a clear thesis statement outlining what you’ll discuss in the essay.

Body Paragraphs

Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of empathy supported by evidence or examples. Discuss empathy’s definition, its significance in different contexts (personal, societal, professional), challenges in practicing empathy, benefits, and potential limitations.

Use Examples

Incorporate real-life examples or case studies to illustrate your points and make them relatable to the reader.

Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge differing perspectives or potential counterarguments related to empathy and address them thoughtfully within your essay.

Summarize the main points discussed in the essay. Restate the significance of empathy and its impact, leaving the reader with a lasting impression or call to action.

Edit and Revise

Review your essay for coherence, clarity, and consistency. Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Ensure that your ideas flow logically and that your essay effectively communicates your thoughts on empathy.

Make any necessary revisions based on feedback or additional insights. Ensure that your essay meets the guidelines and requirements if it’s for a specific assignment. Then, finalize and submit your empathy essay.

Final Thoughts

In this blog post, we’ve tried to make writing an empathy essay easier for students. We’ve explained it step by step, using easy examples and clear explanations. The goal is to help students understand what empathy is and how to write about it in an essay.

The steps we’ve shared for writing an empathy essay are straightforward. They start with understanding the topic and doing research, then move on to outlining, writing, and polishing the essay. We’ve highlighted the importance of using personal stories, real-life examples, and organizing ideas well.

Students can benefit from our  assignment writing service  for their empathy essays. Our experienced writers can provide expert help, ensuring the essays meet academic standards and are well-written. This support saves time and helps students focus on other schoolwork while getting a top-notch empathy essay.

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• How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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Table of contents

When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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Overview of Writing an Essay with Empathy: Why is It Important?

As writers, one of our primary goals is to connect with our readers and leave a lasting impression. This is particularly important when writing essays, where our aim is to engage our audience in a meaningful way. One of the key ways to achieve this is by developing empathetic skills and using them in writing.

Empathy is a vital skill that is often overlooked in writing, regardless of whether your goal is to create character empathy or not. It is not just about understanding the emotions of others but also about putting yourself in their shoes and seeing things from their perspective. When writing an essay, it is important to consider your reader's needs and concerns.

One way to show reader empathy in your writing is by using inclusive language. This means using words and phrases that are inclusive of different genders, races, religions, and cultures. By doing this, you are showing your reader that you understand and respect their identity and experiences. It also helps to create a sense of belonging and community, which can make your writing more engaging.

Another way to demonstrate empathy in your writing is by acknowledging and validating the other person's emotions, regardless of whether you're referring to your reader's emotions or building character empathy. This can be done by sharing personal stories or experiences that relate to the topic of your essay. By doing this, you are showing your reader that you understand their struggles and that you are there to support them.

Tips for Writing with Empathy

So, which technique does the author use to engage the reader? Let's find out more about the expert tips for writing an essay with empathy prepared by our paper writing service !

Understand the Reader

Before you wonder how to start writing with empathy, take some time to understand your audience and consider which techniques are used to engage a reader. Who are they? What do they care about? What are their concerns and questions? By understanding your reader, you can tailor your writing style and approach to their needs, using techniques such as storytelling, vivid descriptions, rhetorical questions, and emotional appeals.

Choose an Engaging Topic

Consider your reader's interests and what topics are relevant and meaningful to them. Brainstorm a range of ideas and select a topic that ignites your own passion. By choosing a topic that resonates with your reader, you establish a connection right from the start. This connection, rooted in shared interests and relevance, enables your writing to have a more profound impact. Being one of the best tips for essay writing, remember that an engaging topic sets the stage for an engaging and impactful piece of writing.

Create an Emotional Connection

Emotions are a powerful tool in essay writing, whether you decide - 'I'll pay someone to write my paper ' or not. By connecting with your reader on an emotional level, you can help them relate to your essay and feel invested in your ideas. Use vivid language, storytelling, and personal anecdotes to engage your reader's emotions. This can be one of the helpful tips for writing common app essay, too, creating a deeper connection with your reader and making your writing more impactful.

Structure the Essay for Impact

When it comes to understanding how to start writing with empathy, whether it's for a book report or any other type of writing, the structure of your essay is key. Use a clear and logical structure, with a strong introduction that captures your reader's attention, even if you're thinking, 'Who can write my book report for me ?' and a conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Break up your text into smaller sections with headings, bullet points, or numbered lists to make it easier for your reader to follow along. By structuring your essay in a way that is easy to follow, you can help your reader stay engaged and invested in your ideas.

Use Empathetic Language

The same words can be interpreted differently by each individual. So, choose your language carefully and use words that resonate with your reader. Use inclusive language, avoid jargon, and speak to your reader directly. This is one of the most impactful essay writing tips for students that can help your reader feel seen and understood in your writing.

Engage the Reader through Active Engagement

Active engagement is one of the key tips for writing an essay that keeps your reader invested, leveraging the intricate workings of the human brain. Use questions, prompts, and calls to action to encourage your reader to think about your ideas and interact with your writing. By tapping into their innate curiosity and encouraging interaction, you foster a sense of ownership in your reader, making them more likely to remember and internalize your concepts. This active engagement activates various cognitive mechanisms within the human brain, enhancing the overall impact and memorability of your essay.

Craft a Memorable Conclusion

When crafting the conclusion of your essay, it is essential to present your main claims in an objectively explicit manner. Summarize your points with sensitivity and clarity, ensuring that the emotional resonance of your essay carries through. Consider leaving your reader with a memorable quote or insightful reflection, inviting them to further contemplate the topic at hand. By asking a thought-provoking question, you engage your readers' empathy and encourage them to connect their own experiences with the essay's themes. A well-crafted conclusion, infused with genuine empathy, can ensure that your writing resonates deeply and leaves an indelible mark on your reader's mind.

Edit and Revise with Empathy

Finally, when it comes to grammar tips for essay writing, remember to revise and edit your essay with empathy. Put yourself in your reader's shoes and read your essay as if you were a member of your audience. Look for areas where you can clarify your ideas, improve flow, or add more engagement points. By editing and revising with empathy, not only can you ensure grammatical correctness, but you can also write an essay that truly resonates with your reader.

Examples of Writing with Empathy

Here are some examples of writing with empathy in different essay types, along with helpful tips and suggestions to create vivid descriptions that resonate with your readers.

Tips for writing a narrative essay : To create more empathy, incorporate sensory details, vivid descriptions, and a reflective tone. This will captivate your readers and immerse them in your narrative, creating a compelling and memorable essay.

• Example: 'I still remember the day vividly, as if it happened just yesterday. The wind carried the scent of freshly bloomed flowers, and the sun painted the sky in hues of gold. It was a day of joy and innocence, a day when I believed that anything was possible. Little did I know that life had a different plan in store for me, one that would test my resilience and redefine my understanding of strength.'

Tips for writing a personal essay : Share your authentic experiences, emotions, or even character flaws. To develop empathy, use introspection, vulnerability, and personal reflection to connect with your readers on a profound level and create empathy.

• Example: 'Life has a way of throwing unexpected challenges our way. It was during one such difficult period that I realized the true power of love and support. My family stood by my side, offering unwavering encouragement and a comforting shoulder to lean on. Their presence became my anchor, guiding me through the storm and reminding me that I was never alone.'

Tips for writing a persuasive essay : Present a strong argument supported by credible evidence and logical reasoning. Use persuasive language, appeal to the emotions of your audience, and anticipate and address counterarguments to strengthen your stance.

• Example: 'Imagine a world where our children can breathe in fresh air without the fear of pollution. Picture a future where lush green landscapes replace concrete jungles and endangered species thrive in their natural habitats. This vision can become a reality if human beings unite in our efforts to combat climate change. By adopting sustainable practices and advocating for renewable energy initiatives, we can safeguard the beauty of our planet for generations to come.'

Tips for writing an argumentative essay : Present a clear and well-supported argument. Conduct thorough research, gather compelling evidence, and address opposing viewpoints to strengthen your position. Structure your essay with a strong introduction, coherent body paragraphs, and a compelling conclusion that reinforces your main points.

• Example: 'The urgency of addressing climate change cannot be overstated. Scientific evidence unequivocally points to the grave consequences of inaction. From rising sea levels to extreme weather events, the impacts of climate change are already being felt across the globe. Denying the reality or downplaying the severity of this crisis is a disservice to ourselves and future generations. It is imperative that we take immediate action to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate before it's too late.'

Final Thoughts

By incorporating empathy into your writing, you can create a more engaging and impactful piece. Use these tips for essay writing from our custom essay writing service to help you develop meaningful connections with your reader and create a lasting impression with your paper.

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Argumentative Essay Examples & Analysis

July 20, 2023

Writing successful argumentative or persuasive essays is a sort of academic rite of passage: every student, at some point in their academic career, will have to do it. And not without reason—writing a good argumentative essay requires the ability to organize one’s thoughts, reason logically, and present evidence in support of claims. They even require empathy, as authors are forced to inhabit and then respond to viewpoints that run counter to their own. Here, we’ll look at some argumentative essay examples and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

What is an argumentative essay?

Before we turn to those argumentative essay examples, let’s get precise about what an argumentative essay is. An argumentative essay is an essay that advances a central point, thesis, or claim using evidence and facts. In other words, argumentative essays are essays that argue on behalf of a particular viewpoint. The goal of an argumentative essay is to convince the reader that the essay’s core idea is correct.

Good argumentative essays rely on facts and evidence. Personal anecdotes, appeals to emotion , and opinions that aren’t grounded in evidence just won’t fly. Let’s say I wanted to write an essay arguing that cats are the best pets. It wouldn’t be enough to say that I love having a cat as a pet. That’s just my opinion. Nor would it be enough to cite my downstairs neighbor Claudia, who also has a cat and who also prefers cats to dogs. That’s just an anecdote.

For the essay to have a chance at succeeding, I’d have to use evidence to support my argument. Maybe there are studies that compare the cost of cat ownership to dog ownership and conclude that cat ownership is less expensive. Perhaps there’s medical data that shows that more people are allergic to dogs than they are to cats. And maybe there are surveys that show that cat owners are more satisfied with their pets than are dog owners. I have no idea if any of that is true. The point is that successful argumentative essays use evidence from credible sources to back up their points.

Argumentative essay structure

Important to note before we examine a few argumentative essay examples: most argumentative essays will follow a standard 5-paragraph format. This format entails an introductory paragraph that lays out the essay’s central claim. Next, there are three body paragraphs that each advance sub-claims and evidence to support the central claim. Lastly, there is a conclusion that summarizes the points made. That’s not to say that every good argumentative essay will adhere strictly to the 5-paragraph format. And there is plenty of room for flexibility and creativity within the 5-paragraph format. For example, a good argumentative essay that follows the 5-paragraph template will also generally include counterarguments and rebuttals.

Introduction Example

Now let’s move on to those argumentative essay examples, and examine in particular a couple of introductions. The first takes on a common argumentative essay topic —capital punishment.

The death penalty has long been a divisive issue in the United States. 24 states allow the death penalty, while the other 26 have either banned the death penalty outright or issued moratoriums halting the practice. Proponents of the death penalty argue that it’s an effective deterrent against crime. Time and time again, however, this argument has been shown to be false. Capital punishment does not deter crime. But not only that—the death penalty is irreversible, which allows our imperfect justice system no room for error. Finally, the application of the death penalty is racially biased—the population of death row is over 41% Black , despite Black Americans making up just 13% of the U.S. population. For all these reasons, the death penalty should be outlawed across the board in the United States.

Why this introduction works: First, it’s clear. It lays out the essay’s thesis: that the death penalty should be outlawed in the United States. It also names the sub-arguments the author is going to use to support the thesis: (1), capital punishment does not deter crime, (2), it’s irreversible, and (3), it’s a racially biased practice. In laying out these three points, the author is also laying out the structure of the essay to follow. Each of the body paragraphs will take on one of the three sub-arguments presented in the introduction.

Argumentative Essay Examples (Continued)

Something else I like about this introduction is that it acknowledges and then refutes a common counterargument—the idea that the death penalty is a crime deterrent. Notice also the flow of the first two sentences. The first flags the essay’s topic. But it also makes a claim—that the issue of capital punishment is politically divisive. The following sentence backs this claim up. Essentially half of the country allows the practice; the other half has banned it. This is a feature not just of solid introductions but of good argumentative essays in general—all the essay’s claims will be backed up with evidence.

How it could be improved: Okay, I know I just got through singing the praises of the first pair of sentences, but if I were really nitpicking, I might take issue with them. Why? The first sentence is a bit of a placeholder. It’s a platitude, a way for the author to get a foothold in the piece. The essay isn’t about how divisive the death penalty is; it’s about why it ought to be abolished. When it comes to writing an argumentative essay, I always like to err on the side of blunt. There’s nothing wrong with starting an argumentative essay with the main idea: Capital punishment is an immoral and ineffective form of punishment, and the practice should be abolished .

Let’s move on to another argumentative essay example. Here’s an introduction that deals with the effects of technology on the brain:

Much of the critical discussion around technology today revolves around social media. Critics argue that social media has cut us off from our fellow citizens, trapping us in “information silos” and contributing to political polarization. Social media also promotes unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards, which can lead to anxiety and depression. What’s more, the social media apps themselves are designed to addict their users. These are all legitimate critiques of social media, and they ought to be taken seriously. But the problem of technology today goes deeper than social media. The internet itself is the problem. Whether it’s on our phones or our laptops, on a social media app, or doing a Google search, the internet promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning. The internet is, quite literally, rewiring our brains.

Why this introduction works: This introduction hooks the reader by tying a topical debate about social media to the essay’s main subject—the problem of the internet itself. The introduction makes it clear what the essay is going to be about; the sentence, “But the problem of technology…” signals to the reader that the main idea is coming. I like the clarity with which the main idea is stated, and, as in the previous introduction, the main idea sets up the essay to follow.

How it could be improved: I like how direct this introduction is, but it might be improved by being a little more specific. Without getting too technical, the introduction might tell the reader what it means to “promote distracted thinking and superficial learning.” It might also hint as to why these are good arguments. For example, are there neurological or psychological studies that back this claim up? A simple fix might be: Whether it’s on our phones or our laptops, on a social media app, or doing a Google search, countless studies have shown that the internet promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning . The body paragraphs would then elaborate on those points. And the last sentence, while catchy, is a bit vague.

Body Paragraph Example

Let’s stick with our essay on capital punishment and continue on to the first body paragraph.

Proponents of the death penalty have long claimed that the practice is an effective deterrent to crime. It might not be pretty, they say, but its deterrent effects prevent further crime. Therefore, its continued use is justified. The problem is that this is just not borne out in the data. There is simply no evidence that the death penalty deters crime more than other forms of punishment, like long prison sentences. States, where the death penalty is still carried out, do not have lower crime rates than states where the practice has been abolished. States that have abandoned the death penalty likewise show no increase in crime or murder rates.

Body Paragraph (Continued)

For example, the state of Louisiana, where the death penalty is legal, has a murder rate of 21.3 per 100,000 residents. In Iowa, where the death penalty was abolished in 1965, the murder rate is 3.2 per 100,000. In Kentucky the death penalty is legal and the murder rate is 9.6; in Michigan where it’s illegal, the murder rate is 8.7. The death penalty simply has no bearing on murder rates. If it did, we’d see markedly lower murder rates in states that maintain the practice. But that’s not the case. Capital punishment does not deter crime. Therefore, it should be abolished.

Why this paragraph works: This body paragraph is successful because it coheres with the main idea set out in the introduction. It supports the essay’s first sub-argument—that capital punishment does not deter crime—and in so doing, it supports the essay’s main idea—that capital punishment should be abolished. How does it do that? By appealing to the data. A nice feature of this paragraph is that it simultaneously debunks a common counterargument and advances the essay’s thesis. It also supplies a few direct examples (murder rates in states like Kentucky, Michigan, etc.) without getting too technical. Importantly, the last few sentences tie the data back to the main idea of the essay. It’s not enough to pepper your essay with statistics. A good argumentative essay will unpack the statistics, tell the reader why the statistics matter, and how they support or confirm the essay’s main idea.

How it could be improved: The author is missing one logical connection at the end of the paragraph. The author shows that capital punishment doesn’t deter crime, but then just jumps to their conclusion. They needed to establish a logical bridge to get from the sub-argument to the conclusion. That bridge might be: if the deterrent effect is being used as a justification to maintain the practice, but the deterrent effect doesn’t really exist, then , in the absence of some other justification, the death penalty should be abolished. The author almost got there, but just needed to make that one final logical connection.

Conclusion Example

Once we’ve supported each of our sub-arguments with a corresponding body paragraph, it’s time to move on to the conclusion.

It might be nice to think that executing murderers prevents future murders from happening, that our justice system is infallible and no one is ever wrongly put to death, and that the application of the death penalty is free of bias. But as we have seen, each of those thoughts are just comforting fictions. The death penalty does not prevent future crime—if it did, we’d see higher crime rates in states that’ve done away with capital punishment. The death penalty is an irreversible punishment meted out by an imperfect justice system—as a result, wrongful executions are unavoidable. And the death penalty disproportionately affects people of color. The death penalty is an unjustifiable practice—both practically and morally. Therefore, the United States should do away with the practice and join the more than 85 world nations that have already done so.

Why this conclusion works: It concisely summarizes the points made throughout the essay. But notice that it’s not identical to the introduction. The conclusion makes it clear that our understanding of the issue has changed with the essay. It not only revisits the sub-arguments, it expounds upon them. And to put a bow on everything, it restates the thesis—this time, though, with a little more emotional oomph.

How it could be improved: I’d love to see a little more specificity with regard to the sub-arguments. Instead of just rehashing the second sub-argument—that wrongful executions are unavoidable—the author could’ve included a quick statistic to give the argument more weight. For example: The death penalty is an irreversible punishment meted out by an imperfect justice system—as a result, wrongful executions are unavoidable. Since 1973, at least 190 people have been put to death who were later found to be innocent.

An argumentative essay is a powerful way to convey one’s ideas. As an academic exercise, mastering the art of the argumentative essay requires students to hone their skills of critical thinking, rhetoric, and logical reasoning. The best argumentative essays communicate their ideas clearly and back up their claims with evidence.

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argumentative essay

What is argumentative essay definition, usage, and literary examples, argumentative essay definition.

An  argumentative essay  [ahr-gyuh-MEN-tuh-tiv ess-ay] is an essay in which the writer uses thorough research to defend their position on a disputable topic. An argumentative essay contains a thesis, multiple body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The body can also include a counterargument.

Roots in Ancient Rhetoric

The argumentative essay format has roots in ancient  rhetoric , which Greco-Romans considered the “art of  persuasion .” While ancient societies primarily used speech to persuade their audiences, modern academics most often use written arguments based on the ancient orators’ classical argument structure.

As detailed in Plato’s  On Rhetoric , a classical argument—similar to an argumentative essay—begins with an introduction ( exordium ), gives necessary  context  ( narratio ), offers the writer’s position and thesis ( proposito  and  partitio ), presents supporting research to confirm the writer’s argument or refute other positions ( confirmatio  and  refutatio ), and ends with a conclusion ( peroration ).

The Five-Part Argumentative Essay

• Thesis and Introduction:  Often only a sentence long, the thesis concisely describes the writer’s position, and the introductory paragraph provides context.
• Body Paragraphs and Counterargument:  There are generally three body paragraphs used to present research that supports the writer’s thesis. They can also include a counterargument that details and refutes opposing positions.
• Conclusion:  This summarizes the writer’s evidential findings and reiterates the thesis.

Classic Models

There are two main models of argumentation: the Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

The Toulmin Model

British philosopher Stephen Toulmin founded the Toulmin model in his book  The Uses of Argument  (1958). This style of argumentation, an expansion of the classical model, has six major components:

• Claim:  The thesis
• Data : The research supporting the thesis
• Warrant:  An explanation that connects the data and the thesis
• Backing:  Support for the warrant
• Modality:  Confirmation of the arguer’s conviction in the thesis
• Rebuttal :  A counterargument or exceptions to the thesis

The Rogerian Model

Psychotherapist Carl Rogers developed the Rogerian model as a form of rhetoric that favored empathy and multiple  perspectives . This model attempts to weigh each option fairly before persuading its audience. The model consists of the following components:

• Introduction:  Introduction of the topic as a mutual problem
• Opposing Position:  An explanation of the writer’s position that recognizes opposing positions
• Context for Opposing Position:  An outline of the opposing position and confirmation of its validity
• Argued Position: A presentation of the writer’s position
• Context for Position: This offers data that validates writer’s position
• Benefits:  An explanation of how the writer’s position benefits the opposition

Argumentative vs. Expository Essays

Similar to an argumentative essay, an expository essay uses evidence to inform its readers. It teaches readers how to do something, analyzes a topic, gives step-by-step instructions, or describes an event.

Expository essays differ from argumentative essays in that they’re often assigned within a classroom structure, restricting the amount of outside research. The aim of an expository essay is more often to explain something rather than persuade its audience.

Argumentative Essays in Education

Argumentative essays appear primarily as assignments in education and academia. Writing in this form requires that students understand alternative opinions, learn the value of thorough research, and learn to persuade their audiences using evidence.

Examples of Argumentative Essays

1. Matthew L. Sanders, “ Becoming a Learner ”

“Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education” is a 2018 essay by Matthew L. Sanders. In the essay, Sanders argues against the traditional understanding of a college education and suggests students seek out critical and creative thinking skills rather than job marketability. Sanders outlines his thesis clearly:

The primary purpose of college isn’t learning a specific set of professional skills; the primary purpose of college is to become a learner.

2. Margaret Fuller, “ The Great Lawsuit ”

In Fuller’s 1843 essay, she compares the plight of women to that of slaves and argues that women should have the same rights as men:

As men become aware that all men have not had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.

3. Nicholas Carr, “ Is Google Making us Stupid? ”

In his 2008 essay, Carr uses mostly  anecdotal  evidence to support his thesis. He posits that having access to the internet’s trove of information contributes to an inability to read longer-form materials. In the following excerpt, he presents current research that supports his thesis:

They [University College London] found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from on source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site.

Further Research on Argumentative Essays

The  Purdue Online Writing Lab  outlines effective argumentative essays.

Find examples of argumentative essays on  LiteraryDevices.net  and  Prepscholar.com .

Masterclass.com  has an argumentative essay step-by-step writing guide available.

Related Terms

• Expository Essay

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CANDIDA ROYALLE AND THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: A History From Below Jane Kamensky

In 1984, Candida Royalle changed the porn industry when she co-founded the female-targeted Femme Productions. As Kamensky convincingly argues in this scholarly and engaging tribute, the performer, producer and director was more than a feminist pioneer; her life mirrored that of the sexual revolution itself.

“Her rigor and thoroughness demand that the reader take seriously an underdog who made her name in a stigmatized industry. This book is a labor of empathy that refuses to simplify or valorize its subject.”

From Rich Juzwiak’s review

Norton | $35

HELP WANTED Adelle Waldman

Waldman’s long-anticipated follow-up to her 2013 debut, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” applies her sharp sense of relational drama and dark comedy to the retail work space. The big-box store is Town Square, and the cast of characters who toil there are as surprising and varied as the merchandise they stock.

“Waldman is skilled at building momentum and tension through intricacies of plot. The book shines whenever the group is together, concocting plans … in search of a shared sense of hope.”

From Alexandra Chang’s review

Norton | $28.99

THE HAMMER: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Hamilton Nolan

The longtime labor reporter and former Gawker journalist’s lively account of the current landscape of the American labor movement paints colorful portraits of union organizers from across the country alongside a pointed critique of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“Offers an impressive array of scenes from the front lines of the 21st-century economy. … As ‘The Hammer’ shows, the kind of solidarity that might naturally arise from shared frustrations on the conveyor belt doesn’t necessarily translate to the broader movement all on its own.”

From Willa Glickman’s review

Hachette | $30

THE ACHILLES TRAP: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq Steve Coll

Coll’s book stretches from Hussein’s earliest days in power to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tracking the dictator’s state of mind with the help of 2,000 hours of rarely accessed audio from high-level meetings that Hussein “recorded as assiduously as Richard Nixon,” Coll says.

“Most of the story is vivid and sometimes even funny. … Unlike his main character, Coll succeeds in part because he has an eye for dramatic irony.”

From Noreen Malone’s review

Penguin Press | $35

ON THE MOVE: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America Abrahm Lustgarten

The climate is changing, says the author, a climate scientist — and drought, fire and heat waves are going to cause massive demographic shifts. To get a sense of the scale of these changes, the author examines studies and models that simulate future migration scenarios, and combines his insights with first-person reportage. The results are often alarming and admittedly speculative, but never less than compelling.

“The author’s eloquent personal insights … are astonishing as well as gripping, presenting an intimate understanding of why poor agricultural workers, beset by droughts and calamitous economic circumstances, risk everything.”

From Jon Gertner’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $30

THE BLACK BOX: Writing the Race Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In his latest book, the Harvard scholar shows how African American writers have used the written word to shape their reality despite constraints imposed on them from outside, using the metaphor of the box to reflect ordeals withstood and survived since Africans were first brought to this continent.

“The allure of this book, and the reason for its existence, are the narrative links he draws. … This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.”

From Tope Folarin’s review

Penguin Press | $30

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“City in Ruins” is the third novel in Don Winslow’s Danny Ryan trilogy and, he says, his last book. He’s retiring in part to invest more time into political activism .

​​Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” is “wildly optimistic” about Gen Z. Here’s why .

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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