As Maia Szalavitz and Bruce Perry point out in the Introduction to their book, Born for Love (2010), 'Empathy remains both intensely important and widely misunderstood'. They describe it as the ability to 'stand in another's shoes and care about what it feels like to be there' and how it underlies 'virtually everything that makes society work - like trust, altruism, collaboration, love, charity.' Like Perry and Szalavitz, many people believe that a lack of empathy is at the root of many social problems and underpins inequality and corruption.
The word itself appears in the early 20th century as a translation of the German word Einfuhlung which means 'feeling into'. It is sometimes confused with the word 'sympathy' which is Greek in origin. It is a subject that concerns philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists alike.
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