A three-component framework for empathic technologies to augment human interaction

Abstract

Empathy can be considered one of our most important social processes. In that light, empathic technologies are the class of technologies that can augment empathy between two or more individuals. To provide a basis for such technologies, a three component framework is presented based on psychology and neuroscience, consisting of cognitive empathy, emotional convergence, and empathic responding. These three components can be situated in affective computing and social signal processing and pose different opportunities for empathic technologies. To leverage these opportunities, automated measurement possibilities for each component are identified using (combinations of) facial expressions, speech, and physiological signals. Thereafter, methodological challenges are discussed, including ground truth measurements and empathy induction. Finally, a research agenda is presented for social signal processing. This framework can help to further research on empathic technologies and ultimately bring it to fruition in meaningful innovations. In turn, this could enhance empathic behavior, thereby increasing altruism, trust, cooperation, and bonding.

Poor Thing! Would You Feel Sorry for a Simulated Robot?

“…Generally, empathy refers to the case where a person shares in another's emotional state [18], where sympathy is the broader term of having concern for others [7], even if no emotional reaction takes place; these terms are often used interchangeably in practice. To add to the confusion, the term empathy itself has various definitions depending on the use case.…”

“…These are not necessarily always the same; for example, a person who generally does not empathize with others (low dispositional empathy) may still have a strong empathic response (situational empathy) in a particular situation, and vice versa. Dispositional empathy has often been used for psychologically profiling people (e.g., [11,18]), whereas situational empathy can be used to consider the impact that a stimulus (such as something bad happening to another person, or a robot) may have on people at a specific time.…”

“…Much of the existing work focuses on measuring dispositional empathy (not situational, e.g., see [9,11,18]), and so these methods are not useful for our purpose. A challenge with assessing situational empathic response is that it is internal to the person experiencing it, and cannot be externally observed.…”

“…or external involuntary gestures such as facial expressions [11,16]. The difficulty with such techniques is that they often require not only advanced equipment but also specialized expertise from an experienced team to analyze [18], making them less accessible to the broader HRI research audience.…”

Needs and challenges in human computer interaction for processing social emotional information

“…Empathy for example, particularly emotional empathy, is understood as key in the flow of communication by Janssen [60], who considers empathy within humanhuman interactions and provision of affordances that amplify signals (like heart-rate) as a means of increasing potential empathy. "Empathy is treated as a property of an interaction and not as a property of an individual" ([60, p. 145]).…”