Editing Sympathy (section)

==Causes==
[[File:US Navy 100119-N-7948C-048 A Haitian woman screams in pain as U.S. military medical personnel try to set her broken leg at a clinic at the Killick Haitian Coast Guard Base.jpg|thumb|alt=|Medical personnel aid a suffering woman after the [[2010 Haiti earthquake]].]]

Prerequisites for feeling sympathy include: attention to a subject, believing that a subject is in a state of need, and understanding the context of what is occurring in a subject's life. To feel sympathy for a person or group, you must first pay attention to them.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Dickert|first1=S.|last2=Slovic|first2=P. |title=Attentional mechanisms in the generation of sympathy|journal=Judgment and Decision Making|year=2009|volume=4|issue=4|pages=297–306|doi=10.1017/S1930297500003879|hdl=1794/22048|hdl-access=free}}</ref> When one is distracted, this severely limits one's ability to produce strong affective responses.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Psychological Approaches to Pain Management: A Practitioner's Handbook|edition=2nd|url=https://archive.org/details/psychologicalapp00turk|url-access=subscription|last1=Turk|first1=Dennis|last2=Gatchel|first2=Robert|publisher=Guilford Press|year=2002|isbn=978-1572306424|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/psychologicalapp00turk/page/n283 265]}}</ref> When not distracted, people can attend to and respond to a variety of emotional subjects and experiences.

The perceived need of an individual/group elicits sympathy. Different states of need (such as perceived vulnerability or pain) call for different sorts of reactions, including those that range from attention to sympathy. For example, a person with cancer might draw a stronger feeling of sympathy than a person with a cold. Depending on the circumstance of the subject, the way that sympathy is expressed can vary because of the given situation. Gestures of sympathy may also be seen as a social response to a crisis.<ref name=PMCCT />

Opinions about human deservingness, interdependence, and vulnerability motivate sympathy. A person who seems "deserving" of aid is more likely to be helped.<ref name="Lowenstein 2007 112–126">{{cite journal|last=Lowenstein|first=G.|author2=Small, D. A. |title=The scarecrow and the tin man: The vicissitudes of human sympathy and caring|journal=Review of General Psychology|year=2007|volume=11|issue=2|pages=112–126|doi=10.1037/1089-2680.11.2.112|s2cid=11729338}}</ref> A belief in human interdependence fuels sympathetic behavior.

Sympathy is also believed to be based on the principle of the powerful helping the vulnerable (young, elderly, sick).<ref>{{cite journal|last=Djiker|first=A. J. M.|title=Perceived vulnerability as a common basis of moral emotions|journal=British Journal of Social Psychology|year=2010|volume=49|issue=2|pages=415–423|doi=10.1348/014466609x482668|pmid=20030963}}</ref> This desire to help the vulnerable has been suggested by the American Psychological Association, among others, to stem from paternalistic motives to protect and aid children and the weak.{{cn|reason=|date=August 2023}} In this theory, people help other people in general by generalizing the maternal as well as the paternal instincts to care for their own children or family.

Moods, previous experiences, social connections, novelty, salience, and spatial proximity also influence the experience of sympathy.<ref name="Lowenstein 2007 112–126"/> People experiencing positive mood states and people who have similar life experiences are more likely to express sympathy to those who are being sympathized with.

People in spatial or geographic proximity (such as neighbors and citizens of a given country) are more likely to experience sympathy towards each other. ''Social'' proximity follows the same pattern: Members of certain groups (e.g. racial groups) are more sympathetic to people who are also members of the group.<ref name="Lowenstein 2007 112–126"/> Social proximity is linked with in-group/out-group status. People within the same group are interconnected and share successes and failures and therefore experience more sympathy towards each other than to out-group members, or social outsiders.

New and emotionally provoking situations also heighten empathic emotions, such as sympathy. People seem to habituate to events that are similar in content and type and strength of emotion. The first horrific event that is witnessed will elicit a greater sympathetic response compared to the subsequent experiences of the same horrific event.