ABSTRACT
Even how, the subject of empathy poses serious conceptual problems. Thus, there has been little agreement among psychologists about how to define empathy. For example, psychologists cannot agree what biological and socio-cognitive capacities are required for empathy to occur; whether empathy is a response to another's affect or to a situation provoking affect; at what age empathy emerges; how to distinguish it from identification, projection and role-taking; and whether empathy is a cognitive or an affective process, or indeed both a cognitive and an affective process.
