Are there different types of empathy?

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I know that nowadays the word empathy seems to be overused and when actually describing sympathy.

But, are there different types of empathy a person can experience? Perhaps a difference between Aspies and N.Ts.
How common is true empathy?
Is anyone here an empath?

Thanks.

Affective and Cognitive Empathy.

Aspies are often better at the former.

empathy-the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else's feelings
sympathy-the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else's trouble, grief, misfortune, etc. : a sympathetic feeling
Mirriam-Webster's dictionary

The reality is that empathy is not only the ability to recognize emotions in someone else, but also the feeling that you share in them and can feel the same way as them.
Sympathy is something different from empathy because it's about feeling bad for someone else but not really feeling bad the way they feel bad. It's synonymous with pity.

There's the idea that one cannot feel either sympathy or empathy without a more distal, basic understanding of another's emotions. Our vocabulary seems to lack a word for this. We really should have one, someone make up a good word for it! Let's get some suggestions and then make a poll :-)

What has been defined on wrong planet in at least one other thread recently, however, defines empathy as the understanding of someone else's feelings, while sympathy is when you can sort of feel them for yourself. I've heard other people on the ASD define it this way too. I wonder where these definitions originated from?

...or just add Affect or Cognitive in front of empathy as per above. :-p

I think I feel more for strangers than the average person does.

This is one reason I was a peace protestor against the first Persian Gulf war back in 1991. And also one reason I care about such issues as public education on influenza and oral rehydration solution.

What are the definitions of Cognitive and Affective empathy?

"Affective empathy, also called emotional empathy: the capacity to respond with an appropriate emotion to another's mental states. Our ability to empathize emotionally is supposed to be based on emotional contagion: being affected by another's emotional or arousal state."

"Cognitive empathy: the capacity to understand another's perspective or mental state. The terms cognitive empathy and theory of mind are often used synonymously, but due to a lack of studies comparing theory of mind with types of empathy, it is unclear whether these are equivalent."

"Although science has not yet agreed upon a precise definition of these constructs, there is consensus about this distinction. There is a difference in disturbance between affective and cognitive empathy in different psychiatric disorders. Psychopathy, schizophrenia, depersonalization, and narcissism are characterized by impairments in affective empathy but not in cognitive empathy, whereas bipolar disorder, borderline traits, and, by some accounts, autism are associated with deficits in cognitive empathy but not in affective empathy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy