CoEmpaTeam: Enhancing Cognitive Empathy using LLM-based Avatars and Dynamic Role Play in Virtual Reality
This addresses the problem of declining cognitive empathy in performance-driven societies, offering a novel training tool, though it is incremental in applying existing VR and LLM technologies to a specific domain.
The authors tackled the decline of cognitive empathy by developing CoEmpaTeam, a VR system using LLM-based avatars for dynamic role play, which significantly increased cognitive empathy in participants (n=32) and transferred to real-life applications.
Cognitive empathy, the ability to understand others' perspectives, is essential for effective communication, reducing biases, and constructive negotiation. However, this skill is declining in a performance-driven society, which prioritizes efficiency over perspective-taking. Here, the training of cognitive empathy is challenging because it is a subtle, hard-to-perceive soft skill. To address this, we developed CoEmpaTeam, a VR-based system that enables users to train their cognitive empathy by using LLM-driven avatars with different personalities. Through dynamic role play, users actively engage in perspective-taking, experiencing situations through another person's eyes. CoEmpaTeam deploys three avatars who significantly differ in their personality, validated by a technical evaluation and an online experiment (n=90). Next, we evaluated the system through a lab experiment with 32 participants who performed three sessions across two weeks, followed by a one-week diary study. Our results showed a significant increase in cognitive empathy, which, according to participants, transferred into their real lives.