The ability to empathize with those around you is a uniquely human ability. Unfortunately, empathy often gets confused with sympathy. Sympathy is the act of feeling compassion and sorrow for another person’s situation. Their plight causes you to have feelings of your own about what they’re going through, but you have no real understanding or insight about how they feel. Furthermore, sympathy isn’t limited to one person. You can be sympathetic to whole groups of people and even to things that are non-tangible, like causes or movements.