Is ChatGPT More Empathetic than Humans?

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Welivita, Anuradha, Pu, Pearl
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913258504454144
author Welivita, Anuradha
Pu, Pearl
author_facet Welivita, Anuradha
Pu, Pearl
contents This paper investigates the empathetic responding capabilities of ChatGPT, particularly its latest iteration, GPT-4, in comparison to human-generated responses to a wide range of emotional scenarios, both positive and negative. We employ a rigorous evaluation methodology, involving a between-groups study with 600 participants, to evaluate the level of empathy in responses generated by humans and ChatGPT. ChatGPT is prompted in two distinct ways: a standard approach and one explicitly detailing empathy's cognitive, affective, and compassionate counterparts. Our findings indicate that the average empathy rating of responses generated by ChatGPT exceeds those crafted by humans by approximately 10%. Additionally, instructing ChatGPT to incorporate a clear understanding of empathy in its responses makes the responses align approximately 5 times more closely with the expectations of individuals possessing a high degree of empathy, compared to human responses. The proposed evaluation framework serves as a scalable and adaptable framework to assess the empathetic capabilities of newer and updated versions of large language models, eliminating the need to replicate the current study's results in future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_05572
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is ChatGPT More Empathetic than Humans?
Welivita, Anuradha
Pu, Pearl
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
This paper investigates the empathetic responding capabilities of ChatGPT, particularly its latest iteration, GPT-4, in comparison to human-generated responses to a wide range of emotional scenarios, both positive and negative. We employ a rigorous evaluation methodology, involving a between-groups study with 600 participants, to evaluate the level of empathy in responses generated by humans and ChatGPT. ChatGPT is prompted in two distinct ways: a standard approach and one explicitly detailing empathy's cognitive, affective, and compassionate counterparts. Our findings indicate that the average empathy rating of responses generated by ChatGPT exceeds those crafted by humans by approximately 10%. Additionally, instructing ChatGPT to incorporate a clear understanding of empathy in its responses makes the responses align approximately 5 times more closely with the expectations of individuals possessing a high degree of empathy, compared to human responses. The proposed evaluation framework serves as a scalable and adaptable framework to assess the empathetic capabilities of newer and updated versions of large language models, eliminating the need to replicate the current study's results in future research.
title Is ChatGPT More Empathetic than Humans?
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05572