Linguistic Empathy: Behavioral measures, neurophysiological correlates, and correlation with Psychological Empathy

Trevor Kann; Steven Berman; Michael S Cohen; Emily Goldknopf; Merve Gülser; Gennady Erlikhman; Kristi Trinh; Olga T Yokoyama; Eran Zaidel

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108650

Linguistic Empathy: Behavioral measures, neurophysiological correlates, and correlation with Psychological Empathy

Neuropsychologia. 2023 Dec 15:191:108650. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108650. Epub 2023 Jul 28.

Authors

Trevor Kann¹, Steven Berman², Michael S Cohen³, Emily Goldknopf⁴, Merve Gülser⁵, Gennady Erlikhman⁶, Kristi Trinh⁷, Olga T Yokoyama⁸, Eran Zaidel⁹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Linguistics, UCLA: 3125 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: kann@humnet.ucla.edu.
² The Semel Institute and Brain Research Institute, UCLA: 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, USA; Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: sberman@ucla.edu.
³ Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: mcohen3@sas.upenn.edu.
⁴ Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: egoldknopf@gmail.com.
⁵ Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: mervegulser@ucla.edu.
⁶ Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: gennady@ucla.edu.
⁷ Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: kltrinh@g.ucla.edu.
⁸ Department of Applied Linguistics, UCLA: 3125 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: olga@humnet.ucla.edu.
⁹ Department of Psychology, UCLA: 1285 Psychology Building, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. Electronic address: zaidel@ucla.edu.

PMID: 37517462
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108650

Abstract

Relations among behavioral, psychological, and electrophysiological correlates of Linguistic Empathy were examined in two experiments using lateralized stimuli. Linguistic Empathy is defined as a linguistic manifestation of the point of view the speaker assumes toward the content of the utterance, and of the speaker's attitude toward/identification with the referents therein. Linguistic choices made by the speaker among multiple logically and referentially synonymous lexical and grammatical options reveal the speaker's perspectives. In experiment 1, acceptability ratings were measured for Context-Target sentence pairs that did or did not violate two Empathy Hierarchies (Person Empathy Hierarchy and Topic Empathy Hierarchy); the Empathy Quotient (EQ) test of Psychological Empathy was also administered. Ratings were lower for sentence pairs that violated both hierarchies than for those violating neither and were intermediate for sentences violating only one hierarchy. Linguistic Empathy (LE) was operationalized as the difference in ratings between sentences violating both vs. neither empathy hierarchy; this measure correlated positively with EQ. Experiment 2 replicated those results with new participants and measured reaction time and EEG during ratings. While there were no effects of hemisphere or visual field on the linguistic variables, the amplitude of a positive event-related potential deflection at 380 ms provided a partial electrophysiological correlate for LE. Its difference measure correlated with behavioral LE but not with EQ. Though preliminary, these experiments show that Linguistic Empathy may share information processing computations with Psychological Empathy and have an electrophysiological correlate.

Keywords: Event-related potentials; Linguistic empathy; Psychological empathy; psycholinguistics.

MeSH terms

Empathy*
Evoked Potentials / physiology
Humans
Language
Linguistics*