Final answer:
Empathy encompasses cognitive, emotional, and compassionate forms and is critical for understanding and relating to others. It often develops during adolescence and is fostered by supportive family relationships. In ethics, empathy is seen as a virtue essential for moral behavior.
Step-by-step explanation:
Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon that involves the capacity to understand and share the feelings of others. There are different forms of empathy, such as cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy. Cognitive empathy, or theory-of-mind, is about the intellectual understanding of others' mental states, including their thoughts and perspectives, which is crucial for social interactions and conflict resolution. Emotional empathy refers to the vicarious experiencing of another's emotional state, while compassionate empathy combines understanding with a desire to help.
Research indicates that cognitive empathy increases during adolescence, with girls generally showing this development earlier than boys. Encouragingly, supportive familial relationships, particularly with fathers, can foster higher levels of cognitive empathy in teens. In different ethical theories, empathy, particularly compassionate empathy, is considered a virtue that is essential for moral development and behavior.