Understanding Empathy - Essay Example

unit Supervisor’s 20 January Understanding empathy Empathy is the capa to understand and be part of another person’s emotions. I have learnt, from the course materials, that empathy is an involuntary process that concordance mediates. When concordance exist between the person and another who is experiencing a situation, the observer is likely to empathize than if concordance does not exist. I learnt from activity one that by feeling an object, I can easily identify it is the object is common to my routine applications.

I also learnt, from activity two, that with focus on a person, peer is likely to emulate the person’s actions such as taking food from a plate into the mouth or playing with a spoon. The observation is reliable because repeating the activity in a one-to-one environment also identified the emulation. The mirror neurons theories suggest that people emulate others’ actions, especially when there is concordance in the parties’ environment. When two people share an experience, they are likely to predict each other’s response than when they have different experience and this is because mirror neurons trigger such reactions.

Consequently, observing a person’s actions creates a similar environment and prompts the observer to emulate the actions (Winerman 1; Kluger 1). The mirror neurons theory explains the observations that I made in the two activities. Ability to recognize items in my friend’s bag is because of a reflexive action that experience with the items triggered. The theory is more direct to my activity two observation in which a person’s action triggered other people to emulate the action. My observations therefore validates the theory.

I also noted that mirror image firing could influence tone and volume of speech as well as speed in an act such as walking. Works citedKluger, Jeffrey. “Bunnies, stinkbugs, and maggots: The secrets of empathy.” Time. October 13, 2013. Web. January 20, 2015. .Winerman, Lea. “The mind’s mirror.” American Psychological Association. October, 2005. Web. January 20, 2015. .