ABSTRACT
This chapter provides Batson's eight empathic themes, namely mimicry or posture-adopting. This is the idea that, in order to show compassion or sympathy with someone in distress, a person may, knowingly or unknowingly, mirror people facial expressions, voice, tone, words or body language to convey a sense of understanding and trustworthiness. It serves to note Batson's own helpful observation that 'to recognise the distinctiveness of these eight things called empathy complicates matters. The chapter describes these different uses also reflect an important distinction in the literature between 'cognitive' and 'affective' empathy. It provides each of these eight empathic constructions invites you to take a different perspective, even where people seem very close to one another. The chapter analyses the how these different constructions influence of empathy to be employed and where, if at all, each fits in to the empathy test and its various protagonists.
