Empathy in Work and Love

Empathy is a fundamental experience that precedes prosocial behavior. It is defined as a multidimensional construct that encompasses both a cognitive facet (the ability to accurately perceive the emotions of others) and affective facets (the ability to share the emotions of others and feel sympathy).

On the one hand, empathy includes the cognitive ability to accurately infer another person's emotions (often called empathic accuracy or emotional perception). On the other hand, empathy also encompasses two affective facets: emotional congruence and sympathy. While emotional congruence can be described as 'feeling with' another person, sympathy refers to 'feeling for' another person (Batson et al., 1987).

Empathy Through the Ages

Compared to young people, older adults often have more difficulty accurately recognizing the emotions of others. However, both young and older adults share other people's emotions in similar ways, and older adults often experience greater sympathy than younger adults (Sze, Gyurak, et al., 2012; Wieck & Kunzmann, 2015). .

Empathy in the Work Environment

Work is a central part of life, and most people in adulthood spend a considerable amount of time at work. The work environment offers a continuous stream of tasks, demands, and learning opportunities that affect adult development (Hertzog et al., 2008; Reh et al., 2019). Therefore, it may constitute a critical factor shaping age differences in empathy.

Occupations vary in the demands placed on workers. Job demands are defined as those aspects of work that require sustained physical, cognitive, or emotional effort and are associated with work motivation, performance, and well-being (Demerouti et al., 2001). Emotional labor demands (DLEs) are particularly relevant to the development of empathy in adulthood.

Emotional Demands at Work

DLEs represent those aspects of a job that require emotional effort (Diefendorff et al., 2016; Glomb et al., 2004). In contrast to non-emotional job demands, such as workload, time constraints, and organizational barriers, DLEs primarily relate to the exposure, experience, and expression of emotions in interpersonal encounters with clients, coworkers, or supervisors ( Tuxford & Bradley, 2015). Examples of occupations with relatively low emotional demands are those in which employees interact primarily with technical devices (e.g., IT service, machine controllers). Examples of occupations with relatively high emotional demands are those in which employees provide a service to others (e.g., lawyers, accommodation managers) or care for others (e.g., teachers, nurses).

Cultivating Empathy

Like other competencies and skills, empathy can be cultivated and facilitated through a variety of life contexts (Mattingly & Kraiger, 2019; Schumann et al., 2014). Being immersed in a rich, stimulating and complex environment provides opportunities for individuals to acquire and train relevant skills and therefore accumulate experience over time (Hertzog et al., 2008). Work contexts with high DLEs ideally offer a nurturing and stimulating environment that provides many opportunities to practice and expand empathic skills.

Results and Future Considerations

The current study sought to examine whether exposure to high DLEs leads to an experience-based advantage in older employees' empathy. The results did not clearly confirm such an experience-based advantage. While DLEs did not have a moderating effect on age differences in empathic accuracy or sympathy, high DLEs unexpectedly predicted lower emotional congruence at older ages.

Empathy in Romantic Relationships

In the context of romantic relationships, empathy is described as the ability of individuals to actively understand what their partners are feeling and help them anticipate and avoid potential conflicts. The positive association between empathy and relationship quality is well established in the literature (Kimmes, Edwards, Wetchler, & Bercik, 2014; Ulloa, Hammett, Meda, & Rubalcaba, 2017).

Theories of Love

Love is considered one of the greatest and most intense human feelings. Lee's (1988) theory of love styles used the metaphor of color as the basis for his proposed taxonomy of love. The rainbow has the three primary colors (red, yellow and blue) and the others are derived from these. The three primary styles of love are Eros, Storge and Ludus. Eros is the search for a lover with the idealized physical appearance; Storge is a slow process of getting to know each other, it is about getting used to your partner, it is companionship; And Ludus is the game of love. The derived types of love are Mania (Eros + Ludus), characterized by obsession, jealousy and great emotional intensity; Pragma (Ludus + Storge), a type of practical love that considers the demographic and objective characteristics of being loved, and Agape (Eros + Storge) or altruistic love, which is selfless and without expectation of reciprocity (Andrade & Garcia, 2014).

Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

In Sternberg's (2006) triangular theory of love, there are three basic components:

Intimacy, which promotes closeness, bond and connection in romantic relationships, and allows comfort, happiness and communication to increase;

Passion, which leads to romance, physical attraction, relationships. sexual, sexual needs, self-esteem, satisfaction, affiliation, dominance and submission; and decision/commitment, which is characterized by the decision to love and maintain that love.

Commitment is the ability to support and express love, be faithful, considerate and devoted to one's partner (Anderson, 2016).

Marital Satisfaction

According to Rosado and Wagner (2015), in the various stages of the family life cycle, couples seek satisfaction and happiness in their relationships. Satisfaction is represented here by various judgments about the romantic relationship. Marital satisfaction can be defined as an evaluation of the individual resulting from comparing her relationship with sociocultural models and expectations about married life.