Abstract

In a sense, Empathy is still a great mystery. It involves amazing physiological modifications, as well as the influence of social context and culture. In this paper, we focus on empathy as a social experience and on some of the studies where this complex and rich phenomenon was analyzed from a social-psychological viewpoint. This paper also introduces the three contributions included in the present special issue on Empathy in Social Psychology. We emphasize the importance of a socio-psychological analysis of empathy, aiming at encouraging the social psychologists concerned with these topics to develop their collaboration in this domain.