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This is wrong. Empathy in the context of psychology is a feeling rather than a cognition. The kind of empathy you're talking about is a cognitive sort of empathy that doesn't involve a feeling process.

There is actually a distinction between bad empathy and good empathy.

Bad empathy is the type you describe: it allows you to understand other people's perspective. It can be bad because it allows you to exploit them. Think an expert salesman or a pick up artist who knows exactly how to see the world from the perspective of their victim.

Good empathy, on the other hand, includes the other as part of your feeling system. You will refuse to hurt the other because by hurting them you yourself feel bad. This is a non-logical feeling process rather than something analytical.




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