1 Forthcoming in Consciousness and Cognition. Please quote from published version. Empathy ≠ sharing: Perspectives from phenomenology and developmental psychology Dan Zahavi & Philippe Rochat Abstract We argue that important insights regarding the topic of sharing can be gathered from phenomenology and developmental psychology; insights that in part challenge widespread 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 conflates 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 analyses 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. 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 (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” (2009, 43). In various articles, Decety and colleagues have argued that one of the crucial components of empathy is affective sharing between self and other (Decety and Lamm 2006, 1146, Decety and Jackson 2004). And whereas Darwall defines empathy as involving something like a sharing of the other’s mental states (1998, 263), in her defense of the perception-action model of empathy, Preston refers to empathy as “a