Empathy – sharing: Perspectives from phenomenology and developmental psychology Dan Zahavi a,⇑ , Philippe Rochat b a Center for Subjectivity Research, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 140-142, Copenhagen S, Denmark b Department of Psychology, Emory University, 463 Psychology Building, 36 Eagle Row, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA article info Article history: Received 30 December 2014 Revised 12 May 2015 Accepted 13 May 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords:: Empathy Affective sharing Phenomenology Developmental psychology abstract We argue that important insights regarding the topic of sharing can be gathered from phenomenology and developmental psychology; insights that in part challenge wide- spread ideas about what sharing is and where it can be found. To be more specific, we first exemplify how the notion of sharing is being employed in recent discussions of empathy, and then argue that this use of the notion tends to be seriously confused. It typically con- flates similarity and sharing and, more generally speaking, fails to recognize that sharing proper involves reciprocity. As part of this critical analysis, we draw on sophisticated anal- yses of the distinction between empathy and emotional sharing that can be found in early phenomenology. Next, we turn to developmental psychology. Sharing is not simply one thing, but a complex and many-layered phenomenon. By tracing its early developmental trajectory from infancy and beyond, we show how careful psychological observations can help us develop a more sophisticated understanding of sharing than the one currently employed in many discussions in the realm of neuroscience. In our conclusion, we return to the issue of empathy and argue that although empathy does not involve or entail sharing, empathy understood as a basic sensitivity to and understanding of others (rather than as a special prosocial concern for others) might be a precondition for sharing. Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Empathy and affective sharing Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest in and work on empathy in many different disciplines, including philosophy, cognitive science, developmental psychology, social neuroscience, anthropology, nursing, and primatology. Despite all the work being done, there is, however, still no firm agreement about what precisely empathy is or how it might relate to and differ from motor mimicry, emotional contagion, imaginative projection, perspective taking, and sympathy. However, one of the very few ideas that have been able to gather widespread agreement is the idea that empathy is a process whereby one individual comes to share another individual’s affective experience. Even people who otherwise strongly disagree endorse such a view. Here are a few examples: In a 2009 paper, Pfeifer and Dapretto write that ‘‘shared affect between self and other’’ constitutes the experiential core of empathy (Pfeifer and Dapretto, 2009, 184). In an article from the same year, Nickerson, Butler and Carlin note that the word empathy conveys the notion of ‘‘shared or vicarious feeling’’ (Nickerson et al., 2009, 43). In various articles, Decety et al. have argued that one of the crucial components of empathy is affective sharing between self and other (Decety & Lamm, 2006, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.05.008 1053-8100/Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: dza@hum.ku.dk (D. Zahavi). Consciousness and Cognition xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Consciousness and Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog Please cite this article in press as: Zahavi, D., & Rochat, P. Empathy – sharing: Perspectives from phenomenology and developmental psy- chology. Consciousness and Cognition (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.05.008