What are respect, empathy and authenticity?

Katie Bekei

RESPECT: WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN? RESPECT: What does it Really Mean?

What is respect? While it may be easy to recognize the absence of respect, it's not nearly so
easy to define and reflect respect in our daily interactions with people. By definition, respect
means to demonstrate "high regard" for or special attention to something or someone.
However, this definition alone does not provide us guidance about what that something is or
how it is done.

The requirements for respect must be considered from both a social and individual
perspective. We learn the basic social guidelines for respect as children. The parental
directives to play nice, share with others, say please, thank you, and you're welcome, lay the
foundation for respectful interactions with others in life. These basics combined with
community consensus about respectful behavior define standards to guide our interactions
with others.

Respect is individually defined for each person through personal experience. Our personal
definitions of respect are influenced by our personality, emotions, preferences, and cultural
context. Each of these elements may be difficult to define in the clearest and most objective
terms. Even people without disabilities have difficulty describing and explaining personal
criteria for respect tied to these variables. We often learn about these things over time through
relationships with people. Respect requires struggling to understand each person's individual
expectations for respect as we get to know them and build shared experiences over time.

What is Empathy? What is Empathy? (Well worth reading the site)

Empathy is, at its simplest, awareness of the feelings and emotions of other people. It is a key
element of Emotional Intelligence, the link between self and others, because it is how we as
individuals understand what others are experiencing as if we were feeling it ourselves.

Empathy goes far beyond sympathy, which might be considered ‘feeling for’ someone.
Empathy, instead, is ‘feeling with’ that person, through the use of imagination.

What is Empathy? Another perspective on, Empathy Definition (worth reading as

well)

The term “empathy” is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers
generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the
ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

Contemporary researchers often differentiate between two types of empathy: “Affective

empathy” refers to the sensations and feelings we get in response to others’ emotions; this
can include mirroring what that person is feeling, or just feeling stressed when we detect
another’s fear or anxiety. “Cognitive empathy,” sometimes called “perspective taking,” refers
to our ability to identify and understand other peoples’ emotions. Studies suggest that people
with autism spectrum disorders have a hard time empathizing.
Empathy seems to have deep roots in our brains and bodies, and in our evolutionary history.
Elementary forms of empathy have been observed in our primate relatives, in dogs, and even
in rats. Empathy has been associated with two different pathways in the brain, and scientists
have speculated that some aspects of empathy can be traced to mirror neurons, cells in the
brain that fire when we observe someone else perform an action in much the same way that
they would fire if we performed that action ourselves. Research has also uncovered evidence
of a genetic basis to empathy, though studies suggest that people can enhance (or restrict)
their natural empathic abilities.

Having empathy doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll want to help someone in need, though it’s
often a vital first step toward compassionate action.

What is Authenticity? Authenticity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (Well worth

reading the rest of the site

First published Thu Sep 11, 2014

The term ‘authentic’ is used either in the strong sense of being “of undisputed origin or
authorship”, or in a weaker sense of being “faithful to an original” or a “reliable, accurate
representation”. To say that something is authentic is to say that it is what it professes to be,
or what it is reputed to be, in origin or authorship. But the distinction between authentic
and derivative is more complicated when discussing authenticity as a characteristic
attributed to human beings. For in this case, the question arises: What is it to be oneself, at
one with oneself, or truly representing one's self? The multiplicity of puzzles that arise in
conjunction with the conception of authenticity connects with metaphysical,
epistemological, and moral issues. On the one hand, being oneself is inescapable, since
whenever one makes a choice or acts, it is oneself who is doing these things. But on the
other hand, we are sometimes inclined to say that some of the thoughts, decisions and
actions that we undertake are not really one's own and are therefore not genuinely
expressive of who one is. Here, the issue is no longer of metaphysical nature, but rather
about moral-psychology, identity and responsibility.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-respect-empathy-and-authenticity