Have you ever nodded along in a conversation, but inside you’re wondering, what are they really thinking? That gap between what’s said and what’s meant is where most connections fall flat.
Cognitive empathy helps you close that disconnect. It’s what turns social awkwardness into flow, tension into trust, and small talk into actual presence.
“Knowing people’s conscientiousness can also change how you communicate with them through email, through chat…” says Vanessa Van Edwards, a speaker with Science of People and the best-selling author of Captivate, in her Magnetic Charisma program on Mindvalley.
And the best part is, it’s a skill anyone can learn.
What is cognitive empathy?
The “cognitive empathy” definition is simply this: the ability to understand someone’s mental state without being swept up in their emotional experience. It allows you to read between the lines, decode tone, anticipate reactions, and recognize unspoken needs.
It’s part of the trio of empathies:
- Affective empathy (you feel what they feel),
- Compassionate empathy (you want to help), and
- Cognitive empathy (you get where they’re coming from).
Empathy in itself is a super skill, according to Vanessa. In a video on her YouTube channel, she explains, “People with high empathy are able to 1) relate to others’ experiences, 2) mirror another person’s emotions, and 3) sense what others around them are feeling.”
And while all three matter, cognitive empathy is the foundation of effective communication. It lights up the prefrontal cortex (not the emotional limbic system), so you don’t have to feel what they feel but still step into another person’s internal world and see things from their point of view.
Is empathy a cognitive skill?
Yes, cognitive empathy lives firmly in the realm of skill, not soft vibes. (Hence, the word “cognitive” in its name.)
It falls under emotional intelligence, as Vanessa explains, which means that for some people, it comes naturally. However, it can also be something you build, like learning how to speak a new language… Only this one lets you translate what’s going on in someone else’s mind.
At its core, cognitive empathy is your brain’s way of running mental simulations. You’re imagining how someone else might think, react, or interpret a situation without losing sight of your own experience. Psychologists call this “theory of mind,” and it’s what helps you stop making everything about you.
Here’s how it works:
- Mirror neurons light up in your brain when you watch someone act, speak, or emote.
- They help you notice what others feel.
- Then, your cognitive empathy goes a step further to understand what those feelings mean to them.
So, really, you already have the neural wiring. You could even take a cognitive empathy test, like the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test or the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, to see how well you can interpret what others are thinking or feeling.
But skill only becomes strength when you use it on purpose. What you do with it is what sets you apart.
Cognitive empathy vs. emotional empathy
Most people lump the different forms of empathy into one warm, fuzzy blob. But real life (and neuroscience) doesn’t work like that.
So, what is the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy? One is more about perspective-taking, while the other is essentially being compassionate.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison:
| Aspect | Cognitive Empathy | Emotional Empathy |
| What it does | Helps you understand what someone else is thinking | Helps you feel what someone else is feeling |
| System involved | Mental: based on awareness and reasoning | Emotional: rooted in the nervous system |
| How it works | You imagine someone’s perspective, track their logic, and anticipate their reactions | You absorb their emotions as if they were your own |
| Speed | Slower, more deliberate | Fast, automatic, often instinctive |
| Use in relationships | Keeps you grounded and clear-headed | Builds resonance and emotional connection |
| When it shows up | During conflict management, negotiation, or social awareness | When you intuitively pick up on someone’s mood or emotional energy |
| Core function | Think with the person | Feel with the person |
Cognitive empathy vs. affective empathy
Cognitive empathy is “putting yourself into someone else’s shoes,” as Simon Baron-Cohen, a psychologist and leading expert on empathy, points out in his TEDx Talk. Affective, he explains, is “the drive to respond with an appropriate emotion to what someone else is thinking or feeling.”
The latter lives in the limbic system and rides on the back of your mirror neurons. It helps you emotionally sync with others, especially in high-stakes or emotionally charged situations. Parents feel it. Partners feel it. Strangers can trigger it, too.
For instance, when your toddler has a full-on giggle fit and you start laughing, too. Or when someone hits their funny bone and your whole body winces.
The downside is, when affective empathy goes unchecked, it can turn every interaction into emotional overload. Research has found that individuals with heightened affective empathy are more vulnerable to emotional contagion, anxiety, and even burnout, especially when they haven’t learned how to regulate what they absorb from others.
Guess that’s the plus side of cognitive empathy—it lets you stay open without being porous. And when you’re able to use it to your advantage, you can lead without losing your center.
Why is cognitive empathy important?
Cognitive empathy’s the thing that keeps teams on track, friendships steady, and hard conversations from blowing up over nothing. So, without it, everything we call connection starts to slip.
And let’s be honest, the world’s not exactly getting slower or quieter. We’re reacting faster than we’re thinking. Fortunately, cognitive empathy is the pause button that gives you that one-second gap to actually hear what someone means before you respond. That’s the kind of interpersonal intelligence you can’t buy off a LinkedIn course.
Empathy is our most valuable natural resource for conflict resolution.
— Simon Baron-Cohen, psychologist and leading expert on empathy
It threads on a simple natural law: when people feel seen, they drop their defenses. They listen, speak with less edge, and are more than willing to meet you halfway.
But according to Simon, when we lose this mental skill, it’s possible to start being cruel to people. It becomes easier to treat people like objects, flatten their complexity, or misjudge them completely.
This isn’t just about deep talks or conflict zones. It matters in the little stuff too, like texts, emails, and Slack messages. Without tone or context, things get misread fast. One clumsy sentence can wreck a week of trust.
That’s the thing with cognitive empathy: it helps you see the human on the other side of the screen and respond like one, too.
Examples of cognitive empathy
You’ve probably used perspective-taking more times than you realize. It often shows up in subtle moments where your social skills let you read between the lines, spot a shift, or say exactly what someone needed to hear before they said it out loud.
So, how would you demonstrate cognitive empathy? Here are a few moments you might’ve experienced.
- You notice a colleague’s tone shift mid-meeting. Instead of brushing past it, you check in privately to make sure they’re okay.
- You hear your partner say, “I’m fine,” and immediately sense the disconnect. So you pause, stay soft, and give them space to open up.
- You’re pitching to a client and catch a flicker of hesitation on their face. Without missing a beat, you shift gears and ask what’s holding them back.
- You anticipate that your teenager won’t love a new boundary you’re setting. So you explain it with language that respects their independence and perspective.
- You’re in a tense conversation, and someone throws a sharp comment your way. Instead of reacting, you recognize their stress and respond with calm curiosity.
- You draft a message that could land wrongly. Before hitting send, you reread it from the other person’s point of view, and rework it to match their mindset.
- You sense someone’s withdrawing during a group chat. Rather than push on for answers, you circle back later in a one-on-one to give them space to be honest.
That’s the beauty of empathetic awareness. It’s, as Simon highlights, “our most valuable natural resource for conflict resolution.”
And if you can read what’s unsaid, you’ll always be one step ahead of the conversation.
Do psychopaths have empathy?
Yes, but only in part. And that’s exactly what makes them dangerous.
Psychopaths often possess high levels of cognitive empathy. They can read people’s emotions, anticipate reactions, and mirror behavior with impressive accuracy. They understand what others feel. But they don’t care about those feelings in any meaningful way.
What they lack is affective empathy. Simon, in his TED Talk, gave the example of serial killer Ted Bundy. He says, “We can assume that he had good cognitive empathy because he was able to deceive his victims, but that he lacked affective empathy—he just didn’t care.”
Interestingly, brain imaging studies show that people with high psychopathy traits often have reduced activity in regions like the amygdala and anterior insula, which are both key areas in the brain’s empathy circuit. They may intellectually understand that someone is suffering, but they don’t feel any distress in response.
Now, is it the same with sociopaths? As in, do sociopaths have cognitive empathy? Well, some do. But not consistently.
Unlike psychopaths, who often have strong cognitive empathy but no emotional remorse, sociopaths tend to struggle with both. They may understand what someone else is thinking in the moment, but their perspective-taking is often clouded by impulsivity, emotional reactivity, or a lack of long-term self-awareness.
So while psychopaths manipulate with precision, sociopaths react with chaos.
How to improve cognitive empathy: 5 expert-backed tips
Forget slick one-liners. If you really want to know, as the kids say these days, how to get rizz, start by learning how to make people feel seen.
Curiosity is the side door into empathy.
— Vanessa Van Edwards, trainer of Mindvalley’s Magnetic Charisma program
Here are five steps you can learn.
1. Active listening
Most people think they’re listening. In reality, they’re just waiting for their turn to talk.
Active listening is different. It involves your attention, memory, and emotional radar all working at once.
That means listening for more than just the words. You’re picking up on emotional keywords like “frustrated,” “excited,” or “overwhelmed.” You’re noticing the way someone leans in when they mention their daughter’s graduation or how their tone drops when they talk about work.
These are clues. And they’re easy to miss if you’re busy crafting your response instead of staying present.
Vanessa suggests mirroring back those emotional cues with intention. For instance, if someone says, “It was a huge moment for me,” you might say, “That really did sound huge.” As you can see, you’re not just echoing their words but showing them you actually caught what mattered.
The point is, you’re being active about your listening. And in that reflection, people often feel safer opening up.
2. Ask questions
“Curiosity is the side door into empathy,” says Vanessa. Instead of trying to feel what someone else is feeling, start by assuming they have an incredible story, and your job is to help them tell it. This mental shift changes the way you approach conversations.
Rather than default to scripted questions like “How’s your day?” or “What do you do?”, try asking, “What was the best part of your week?” or “What surprised you most about that?”
Research shows that asking open-ended questions like these is strongly linked to higher empathy ratings. In a study published in Patient Education and Counseling, medical students who used this type of communication were rated as more empathetic by standardized patients regardless of gender or race.
So “ask questions like you know they have an incredible story,” as Vanessa advises. Because when someone feels you’re genuinely curious about who they are, they open up in ways you can’t script or force.
3. Reflect emotional language
It comes as no surprise that most people want to be understood. So, what you can do on your side is to use reflection. And one of the simplest ways to do this, according to Vanessa, is to repeat back the emotional words someone uses.
For instance, a friend tells you, “I’ve been feeling completely drained since that presentation.” Instead of brushing past it or offering a fix, you might respond, “Sounds like that really took a lot out of you.” It’s a small adjustment, absolutely, but it signals that you’re tuned in to their story as well as the feeling behind it.
“If they use words like ‘excited,’ ‘engaged,’ and ‘motivated,’ you should use ‘excited,’ ‘engaged,’ and ‘motivated,’” says Vanessa. “It’s just a way of reflecting back to them, ‘I hear you, I see you, I reflect back to you.’”
And sometimes, that’s all that matters.
4. Pay attention to non-verbal cues
If someone leans in when talking about a side project or lights up when mentioning their dog, it’s a signal.
According to research, people feel more connected and understood when their conversation partner reflects back their energy nonverbally. In fact, a study published in the Japanese Journal of Counseling Science found that clients perceived counselors who mirrored their nonverbal behaviors, such as posture and gestures, as more empathetic compared to those who did not engage in mirroring.
So if the person you’re talking to smiles, smile with them. If they lower their voice, soften yours, too.
Vanessa suggests subtly mirroring those body language cues. But no doubt, even the smallest adjustment sends a signal to their nervous system that says, “You’re safe here.”
5. Practice mindfulness before you engage
Empathy, according to spiritual teacher Jeffrey Allen, isn’t just something you do in a conversation but something you become.
“It’s actually becoming the energy temporarily,” he says in his Duality program on Mindvalley, meaning that your energy matches that of the person you’re talking to. “We all do this mostly unconsciously. Our energy boundaries determine how often and how it affects us.”
If you’re scattered or emotionally charged, you might end up merging with someone else’s overwhelm or stress without even realizing it. But if you’re centered and emotionally clear, you’re more likely to hold steady in your own energy and respond with intention.
That’s why mindfulness matters. So, before you respond, ask yourself: What energy am I showing up with?
It helps to learn how to ground yourself so that you create just enough space to stay aware instead of reactive.
Watch Jeffrey Allen’s explanation of empathy and energy:
Frequently asked questions
Do autistic people have cognitive empathy?
Yes, but it’s more nuanced than most people think.
According to Simon, who is also the director of the Autism Research Centre, autistic individuals can have cognitive empathy. However, it may take more conscious effort, support, or time.
“They struggle to imagine other people’s thoughts, their motives, their intentions, and their feelings,” he explains in his TEDx Talk. “But people with autism don’t tend to hurt other people. Instead, they are confused by other people and withdraw socially.”
And in many cases, they feel emotional empathy just as strongly, if not more so, than neurotypical individuals.
What is the difference between empathy and compassion?
The compassion vs. empathy question comes up a lot. And the difference is simple but powerful.
Empathy is when you understand or feel what someone else is going through. Compassion takes it a step further. It’s the emotional drive to ease that suffering, not just sit with it.
Think of it this way:
- Empathy is sensing your friend’s overwhelm.
- Compassion is offering to take something off their plate.
But one shouldn’t go without the other. Because the reality is, the world doesn’t just need people who feel; it needs people who show up.
What does a lack of cognitive empathy look like?
It looks like missed signals, poor timing, and conversations that keep going sideways.
People with low cognitive empathy often…
- struggle to read the room,
- interrupt someone who’s clearly checked out,
- give advice when all that was needed was a pause, or
- miss the emotional temperature of a situation.
It’s like The Office’s Michael Scott asking Jan if she’s PMS-ing… in a meeting… in front of everyone.
Or Emily from Emily in Paris bulldozing French workplace culture with her American optimism, totally unaware of the subtle social dynamics she’s disrupting.
Or Ron Burgundy in Anchorman reading everything on the teleprompter (even if it’s wildly inappropriate) because he can’t pick up on the vibe.
The thing is, it’s not that they’re trying to be cruel. Rather, they just don’t know how to connect. And when that’s missing, even good intentions can land with a thud.
Awaken your unstoppable
Charisma isn’t a party trick or a personality type. It’s a skill you can practice, improve, and eventually embody so fully it feels like second nature.
That’s exactly what happens in Mindvalley’s Magnetic Charisma, a 14-day program with behavioral investigator and best-selling author Vanessa Van Edwards.
You’ll learn the hidden science of human connection, presence, and magnetism. Along the way, you’ll also decode the signals people send and master the ones you give off. As a result, you start showing up with a natural influence that makes people lean in, listen, and remember.
By the end, you’ll walk away with practical tools to:
- Overcome social anxiety,
- Build instant trust and resonance,
- Speak with confidence in any room,
- Connect more deeply with friends, clients, and strangers alike, and
- Much more.
More than 28,000 students have transformed the way they communicate and connect, like U.S.-based licensed real estate broker Edwin Torres:
“I never identified myself as being charismatic, just a person that people enjoyed being around,” he shares on Mindvalley Stories. After completing it, he gained a deeper self-awareness, improved how he connects with people, and discovered how powerful his words and presence can be.
And you can, too. It all starts with the free class from the Magnetic Charisma program.
So if you’ve ever felt overlooked, underestimated, or just unsure of how to truly connect, this is your turning point.
Welcome in.
