Interpretation bias for ambiguous scenarios among individuals with high and low levels of empathy

Abstract

Empathy is the ability to understand and resonate with the emotions of others, typically requiring individuals to infer others' emotional status through the information around them. However, this information is often ambiguous and it is unknown whether individuals with high empathy have a bias in interpreting contextual information. Therefore, this study investigated how individuals with low and high empathy interpret other‐relevant scenarios in Study 1 (N = 98) and self‐relevant scenarios in Study 2 (N = 95), by using the scenarios task and the Sentence Word Association Paradigm (SWAP) separately. Study 1 observed that, for interpretations of other‐relevant scenarios, the high‐empathy group showed greater likelihood ratings for negative interpretations than those with low‐empathy in both social and non‐social scenarios. Study 2 found that, for interpretations of self‐relevant scenarios, the high‐empathy group differed from the low‐empathy group only on non‐social scenarios but not on social scenarios. Specifically, individuals with high empathy were more likely to report a relationship between a negative word and an ambiguous scenario compared to those with low empathy in self‐relevant non‐social scenarios. The study first revealed a bias for highly empathetic individuals to regard the ambiguous scenarios as negative in other‐relevant and self‐relevant scenarios, except for self‐relevant social scenarios.