Conveying Empathy in Social Interactions: The Role of Expressivity

The phenomenon of empathy is often examined in contexts where people demonstrate compassion towards others. However, less is known about the way in which we empathise with others in everyday conversations which are less emotionally-charged. This study sought to explore whether there is a relationship between people's expression levels and the degree to which they are perceived to be empathising. 408 participants were shown thin-slice clips of pairs of people demonstrating varying degrees of empathy towards each other, as rated by groups of naive online observers. The participants then rated the degree to which each interlocutor was behaving in an expressive way. Linear mixed effects modelling was used to test whether there was a significant relationship between the interlocutors' expressivity levels and perceptions of how empathically they were behaving. The results indicated the existence of such a relationship with an increase of 0.14 units in empathic behaviour intensity ratings observed for every increase of 1 unit in expressivity level. A second model explored whether this effect was influenced by the gender dynamic of the interaction. The results revealed that expressivity conveyed empathic understanding and responsivity in female-female and mixed-sex dyads but did not appear to do so for male-male dyads. The findings offer support to the notion that behaving in a highly expressive way can be a way of conveying empathy in everyday conversations, but this effect may be dependent on an empathiser's gender in relation to their target. Further studies with more examples of naturalistic empathising behaviour will help to establish the generalisability of this finding.