Empathy consists of experiencing an emotion as a consequence of observing its occurrence in another person. This conceptualization indicates a much broader range of empathized emotions than the usually researched ones of pain or distress. The process generating empathy entails attention to the other's emotion and imagining what the other is experiencing emotionally. Because people can learn from experiencing empathy and its consequences, they may be motivated to empathize in some situations, to avoid empathizing in others, or to escape from empathy-eliciting situations. A wide range of motivations—prosocial, asocial, or antisocial—may be involved. Throughout, the article presents new hypotheses and areas of research suggested by this approach. We propose that people regulate then-social relationships so as to optimize empathized emotional experiences, on the one hand, and regulate empathic experiences to serve social relationships, on the other.
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