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 soemone else is sad. 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. While a computer cannot feel what you feel, it is posisble to have artificial empathy, where the computer behaves in an understanding way, just as, say an experienced therapist might do.