Empathy is widely used in many disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, health care. Ability to empathise with software end-users seems to be a vital skill software developers should possess. This is because engineering successful software systems involves not only interacting effectively with users but also understanding their true needs. Empathy has the potential to address this situation. Empathy is a predominant human aspect that can be used to comprehend decisions, feelings, emotions and actions of users. However, to date empathy has been under-researched in software engineering (SE) context. In this position paper, we present our exploration of key empathy models from different disciplines and our analysis of their adequacy for application in SE. While there is no evidence for empathy models that are readily applicable to SE, we believe these models can be adapted and applied in SE context with the aim of assisting software engineers to increase their empathy for diverse end-user needs. We present a preliminary taxonomy of empathy by carefully considering the most popular empathy models from different disciplines. We encourage future research on empathy in SE as we believe it is an important human aspect that can significantly influence the relationship between developers and end-users.

翻译：共情在哲学、社会学、心理学及医疗保健等多个学科中被广泛应用。理解软件终端用户需求的能力似乎是软件开发人员应具备的关键技能，这是因为成功构建软件系统不仅需要与用户有效互动，还需理解其真实需求。共情具有解决这一问题的潜力——作为主导性的人类特质，它可用于理解用户的决策、感受、情绪及行为。然而，目前共情在软件工程领域的研究仍显不足。在本立场论文中，我们探讨了不同学科中关键共情模型，并分析了其应用于软件工程领域的适应性。尽管尚无可直接应用于软件工程的共情模型证据，但我们认为这些模型经过调整后可应用于软件工程实践，以帮助软件工程师提升对多样化终端用户需求的共情能力。通过审慎分析不同学科中最常见的共情模型，我们提出了初步的共情分类体系。我们鼓励未来在软件工程领域开展共情研究，因其作为重要的人类特质，可能对开发者与终端用户之间的关系产生显著影响。