On empathy

Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. Empathy is known to increase prosocial (helping) behaviors. While American culture might be socializing people into becoming more individualistic rather than empathic, research has uncovered the existence of “mirror neurons,” which react to emotions expressed by others and then reproduce them.

Psychology Today

A person who has empathy for another cannot hurt that person without feeling the hurt as if it is happening to themselves.

Empathy makes us want to help others, not hurt them.

Those who suffer from a lack of empathy are unable to step outside themselves to experience what other people experience, especially those who feel, think and believe differently from themselves.  They have an adversarial attitude towards groups of people who differ from themselves in their beliefs, traditions or ways of life.

A lack of empathy makes us not care when we hurt others, because we don’t feel their pain.

A lack of empathy for another human implies that we perceive that human as less than human.