Empathy and social categorization: reacting to persons in need

Empathy is one of the most peculiar and intriguing phenomena in social life. It is a complex, multifaceted experience, which can be observed in several different contexts and analyzed at different levels. Even if the most typical field of research on empathy is related to interpersonal relationships, this phenomenon has become relevant also in the analysis of inter-group (and interethnic) relations. Nevertheless, most of the studies on the role of empathy in the social domain are focused on the «empathy-helping relationship», in which it becomes difficult to distinguish empathy from pure sympathy. Other components, which are also focused by the literature but scarcely analyzed, seem more qualified in gathering the specificity of the empathic experience, and they deserve to be more deeply and empirically investigated.