The Effect of Empathic Expression Levels in Virtual Human Interaction: A Controlled Experiment

TL;DR

This study investigates how varying levels of empathic expression in virtual humans affect user experience, revealing that visual cues significantly enhance affective empathy and emphasizing empathy as a graded rather than binary feature.

Contribution

It introduces a nuanced view of empathic expression as a graded design variable and demonstrates the impact of visual cues on affective empathy in virtual agents.

Findings

Video-based empathic agents increase affective empathy significantly.

Visual cues improve perceived naturalness and appropriateness of facial expressions.

Empathy should be designed as a graded feature, not a binary capability.

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly embedded in everyday life, the ability of interactive agents to express empathy has become critical for effective human-AI interaction, particularly in emotionally sensitive contexts. Rather than treating empathy as a binary capability, this study examines how different levels of empathic expression in virtual human interaction influence user experience. We conducted a between-subject experiment (n = 70) in a counseling-style interaction context, comparing three virtual human conditions: a neutral dialogue-based agent, a dialogue-based empathic agent, and a video-based empathic agent that incorporates users' facial cues. Participants engaged in a 15-minute interaction and subsequently evaluated their experience using subjective measures of empathy and interaction quality. Results from analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant differences across conditions in affective empathy, perceived naturalness of facial movement, and appropriateness of facial expression. The video-based empathic expression condition elicited significantly higher affective empathy than the neutral baseline (p < .001) and marginally higher levels than the dialogue-based condition (p < .10). In contrast, cognitive empathy did not differ significantly across conditions. These findings indicate that empathic expression in virtual humans should be conceptualized as a graded design variable, rather than a binary capability, with visually grounded cues playing a decisive role in shaping affective user experience.