empathy

Empathy in humans is the ability to internalise the emotions of another person. To some extent this is an innate repsonse, feeling sad when someone else is sad (called affective empathy in the psychology literature). However, there is also a more cognitive and behavioural sense, of understanding someone else's feelings and acting appropriately, even if one does not feel it for oneself (cognitive empathy). While a computer cannot feel what you feel, it is possible to have artificial empathy, where the computer behaves in an understanding way, just as, say, an experienced therapist might do.