Emotional Empathy
Empathy may be uniquely well suited for bridging the gap between egoism and altruism, since it has the property of transforming another person's misfortune into one's own feeling of distress (Hoffman, 1981, p. 133).
The earliest system (evolutionarily and developmentally) underlying empathy is emotional empathy which is the automatic adoption of another's emotional state (de Waal, 2008). The origin of this mechanism is believed to be phylogenetically old; probably as old as birds and mammals (de Waal, 2008). For this mechanism to still be present today, means that it is in some way evolutionarily advantageous (Decety & Svetlova, 2011). In this regard, empathy is believed to have evolved as a mechanism of reproduction fitness and reciprocity (de Waal, 2008).
Specifically, being biologically equipped to quickly relate to the emotional state of others means that parents (once alerted to signals from their young) can rapidly attend to their offspring's needs (de Waal, 2008). This provides an evolutionary advantage over those parents who remain indifferent to such signals (de Waal, 2008).
Furthermore, once this mechanism existed, it was able to be applied to wider social relationships than just the parental role, which provided advantages in the regulation of social communication and cooperation in activities to achieve shared goals (de Waal, 2008).
