this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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[–] Best_Jeanist@discuss.online 2 points 1 day ago

Affective empathy is the ability to understand someone else's feelings. Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand someone else's thoughts.

Cognitive empathy is really useful for lying, because you can anticipate how someone will think about what you tell them. It's also good for social deduction and interpersonal problem solving. You might use it at a job interview to intuit that your potential employer values modesty, so you understate your accomplishments to win her approval and get the job. Poker is all about cognitive empathy, the goal is to read the value of your opponents' cards on their faces. It can help you to recognise unwritten rules and to absorb information by cultural osmosis. If you want to bend a rule, cognitive empathy will help you gauge how the relevant authority will react, and whether you'll be allowed to bend it.

In short, cognitive empathy is one of the most essential skills to living life as part of a society in a world full of people who don't always say what they really mean. Which is an accurate description of nearly all neurotypicals.