Empathy is a complex emotion found in humans. Emotion, according to Jean Decety PhD., is a broad term that essentially "blurs" the line between the feelings of one person and another.
The "Empathy for AIDS" study Decety spoke about was eye-opening about when people feel empathy. A participant in the study would watch a video of a person experiencing pain. They were then told the person was either healthy, had AIDS from a transfusion, or had AIDS from IV drugs. Not surprisingly, people felt the least empathetic towards those who had AIDS from drug use. Participants felt the most empathetic towards what were considered AIDS victims - those who were given a bad blood transfusion, basically those who had no control of their situation. When participants watched someone who was healthy and in pain, they experienced an amount of empathy somewhere in the middle, though it was not as high as empathy towards AIDS victims, it was still much higher than the empathy they felt for drug users. This particular finding about how there was a significant lack of empathy for drug users is astounding. This lack of feeling could be based from a general statement (ie. "They knew what they were getting themselves into"), or connected to an individual a participant may know and dislike. Whether or not this lack of empathy toward drug users is even actually a problem is an entirely different topic.
Decety did touch on the notion that empathy is not automatic. Empathy relies highly on context. For example, if you heard someone got into a horrible car accident, you would feel bad. However, if you heard someone got into a horrible car accident because they were drinking and speeding, you would feel less bad. Context is a large factor in why empathy can be so flexible. Though two people could be in a bad car accident, we may feel more empathy towards one over the other.
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