Understanding Digitally-Mediated Empathy: An Exploration of Visual, Narrative, and Biosensory Informational Cues

Abstract

Digitally sharing our experiences engages a process of empathy shaped by available informational cues. Biosensory data is one informative cue, but the relationship to empathy is underexplored. In this study, we investigate this process by showing a video of a "target'' person's visual perspective watching a virtual reality film to sixty "observers''. We vary information available to observers via three experimental conditions: a baseline unmodified video, video with narrative text, or with a graph of electrodermal activity (EDA) of the target. Compared to baseline, narrative text increased empathic accuracy (EA) while EDA had an opposite, negative effect. Qualitatively, observers describe their empathic processes as using their own feelings supplemented with the information presented depending on the interpretability of that information. Both narration and EDA prompted observers to reconsider assumptions about another's experience. Our findings lead to a discussion of digitally-mediated empathy with implications for associated research and product development.