From Simon Baron-Cohen (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge), Huffington Post Blogger:

Is there an unambiguous test to identify if someone has empathy? Empathy seems straight-forward to identify because, countless times each day, we observe surface behaviour that we take to be empathy. A man holds the door open for the person behind him. A woman gives her friend a birthday present. A policeman slows down the cars for a blind man crossing the street. A child hands in a wallet he found in the road. Such simple, ordinary acts are assumed to reflect empathy. So is empathy just a synonym for acts of kindness? And if alien impostors produced such acts, without a special empathy-detector camera, wouldn’t we just assume they were true acts of empathy?

I like Baron-Cohen’s  questions. What is true empathy? 

Most of my empathy training comes through the practice of nonviolent communication (NVC).  One prominent NVC trainer says, “Empathy is what happens before you open your mouth.” 

Well, what happens before I open my mouth? 

Empathic presence can be seen as having two components, intention and attention.  My intention in empathy is to be fully present without holding my own agenda or the need to change anything in the other person.  My attention is directed toward receiving the other person’s message and holding my own openness to do so.  This may seem rather abstract, but is actually quite practical when practiced regularly.  When I practice empathy I focus on the qualities of the person’s voice such as pitch, volume, change in tonality, speed, etc. I also observe body language and facial expression for clues.  I consider the energetic qualities of the other person to often be far more telling than the words themselves.

But the words do matter.  When I hear someone using lots of evaluative language, it suggests the other person isn’t as conscious of their deeper needs and values as they could be.  When I hear someone confuse observations with evaluations, feelings with thoughts, needs and values with strategies, or requests with demands, I’m provided with a wealth of information about this person’s inner experience.

Now that I’ve fully received the message, I can decide how to respond.  in some cases I might want to express how this person’s message has landed within me.  Or, I might reflect back what I’ve heard so that the person knows that the message has been received.  Either way, empathy has already taken place before I open my mouth.

So when Baron-Cohen asks is it empathy or just following the rules, for me the answer lies in how well I have allowed myself to receive the message of the other person.  Then if I do respond with empathic-sounding words, they are more likely authentic because these words will embody the experience I am having of the other person.

Read Baron-Cohen’s full blog post.