Computational Methods for the Assessment of Empathic Synchrony

Andrea Bizzego, Giulio Gabrieli, Atiqah Azhari, Peipei Setoh, Gianluca Esposito

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

The synchronization of physiological signals between persons is a well-known proxy of empathy. However, it is also influenced by physiological and environmental factors that should be discriminated to correctly characterize the empathy component. We discuss a framework to compute synchrony and introduce physynch, an open-source package developed to easily replicate its computational procedures. We adopted physynch to study the synchrony of the electrodermal activity in 61 male-female dyads with different types of relationship: strangers (18 dyads), friends (23 dyads) and lovers (20 dyads). The findings confirm previous results on Heart Rate Variability synchrony and suggest that synchrony is influenced by the type of relationship and is stronger in dyads of strangers. physynch is made available for download and use for researchers interested in measuring physiological synchrony.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSmart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
PublisherSpringer
Pages555-564
Number of pages10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Publication series

NameSmart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
Volume184
ISSN (Print)2190-3018
ISSN (Electronic)2190-3026

Keywords

  • empathy
  • physiological synchrony
  • relationship

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