Is the ability to feel empathy type related

[Lotus]

@ Mimosa: It's not type-related. Honestly, don't attribute things like empathy to Fe. Especially if you're defining it with an excerpt from Wikipedia. The idea of it may seem more Fe-related, but that's a gross simplification to assume.

Anyway, here are some interesting articles on it:

     “A basic human impulse affecting the course of history, culture, and personal connections,
empathy is also a neurological fact—and one that’s increasingly understood.

TO NEUROSCIENTIST JEAN DECETY, empathy resembles a sort of minor constellation: clusters
of encephalic stars glowing in the cosmos of an otherwise dark brain. ‘See how they flash,’ Decety
says, pointing to the orange-lit anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula on an fMRI scan. ‘This
person is witnessing another person in pain. ... What’s interesting is that this network of regions
is also involved in the firsthand experience of pain.’”

(The University of Chicago Magazine)

     “On the other hand, in one sense empathy may be more unique than many people think. Although empathy
is often mentioned and grouped together with phenomena such as sympathy, warmth, compassion and so forth,
and naturally have much in common with these phenomena, it is likely the only phenomenon that enables us to
understand as well as care for consciousness outside ourselves.”

(http://www2.psychology.su.se/staff/jh/dissertation.pdf)

     “EMPATHY is the idea that the vital properties which we experience in or attribute to any person or object
outside ourselves are the projections of our own feelings and thoughts.”

(Dictionary of the History of Ideas)

I understand how people are feeling - I rarely "feel" or "experience" how other people are feeling. I can and do put myself in other people's shoes, but it's not something I do instinctively, whereas understanding how people feel and where they are coming from is. That being said, I don't think I'm overly sympathetic. I definitely have the capacity for great sympathy, I'm just... less likely to give it to just anyone? Lol, and I don't mean to sound like I'm stingy with my sympathy. This sounds terrible - I'm really not sure how to put it.

That being said, I don't think empathy is highly type related. Any healthy individual has the capacity for empathy and tbh I don't see the point in over-analyzing it.

How is this empathy? Understanding and "feeling" how someone else is feeling is empathy. Adopting their feelings as your own is not empathy, lol. If anything it shows a weak understanding of your own feelings and and an inability to be assert them when necessary.
I think you are taking this whole being empathetic thing a little too far.

To me empathy is beyond what is identified by the mind to something much deeper, so I can't really see it as type related.

I agree with each of you. And to be honest, this thread kind of bothers me.