Tootfinder

With increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that EMPATHY has become a VICE.
For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left:
It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ rights, illegal immigration and certain views on social and racial justice
“Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policie…

Conservative Christians argue empathy can lead to sin
Some voices on the Christian right are arguing the virtue of empathy has become a vice. Those Christians claim empathy can manipulate people into accepting what they see as sins, like abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights. Conservative evangelicals Allie Beth Stuckey and Joe Rigney have written books within the past year criticizing certain forms of empathy. Stuckey's and Rigney's views have gained traction among President Donald Trump’s Christian base as his Republican administration enacts hard…

Challenging Disability and Interaction Norms in XR: Cooling Down the Empathy Machine in Waiting for Hands
Yesica Duarte, Puneet Jain
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15481

Challenging Disability and Interaction Norms in XR: Cooling Down the Empathy Machine in Waiting for Hands
Virtual Reality (VR) is often described as the "ultimate empathy machine," framing disability as an experience to be simulated through such technologies, which can reduce disability to a spectacle of pity or inspiration. In response, we present Waiting for Hands (WfH), an interactive eXtended Reality (XR) installation that critiques this logic by: (1) repurposing interaction norms in XR through the creation of Alternative Controllers, and (2) staging an absurd XR performance using the built con…

Empathy-R1: A Chain-of-Empathy and Reinforcement Learning Framework for Long-Form Mental Health Support
Xianrong Yao, Dong She, Chenxu Zhang, Yimeng Zhang, Yueru Sun, Noman Ahmed, Yang Gao, Zhanpeng Jin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14851

Empathy-R1: A Chain-of-Empathy and Reinforcement Learning Framework for Long-Form Mental Health Support
Empathy is critical for effective mental health support, especially when addressing Long Counseling Texts (LCTs). However, existing Large Language Models (LLMs) often generate replies that are semantically fluent but lack the structured reasoning necessary for genuine psychological support, particularly in a Chinese context. To bridge this gap, we introduce Empathy-R1, a novel framework that integrates a Chain-of-Empathy (CoE) reasoning process with Reinforcement Learning (RL) to enhance respon…

From the archives.

”As more and more decisions about human fates are made by algorithms, a lack of accountability and transparency will elevate heartless treatment driven by efficiency devoid of empathy. Humans become mere data shadows.”

”The main argument in defense of algorithms is that they eliminate the obstacle of human inefficiency. Often this sentiment fails to take into account the many benefits of human inefficiency, such as taking time to reflect, taking time to ques…

#UX #Design claims to be "solving user problems" and "creating value" and "building with empathy" — and yet this feature still doesn't exist.

So this got me thinking:
Starter primers:
Andor: Leftism/resistance
Barbie: Feminism
Matrix: Philosophy
Good Place: Ethics/Moral Philosophy
Sesame Street: Coexistence
Mr. Rogers: Empathy
Gillian’s Island: Capitalist Theory
https://youtu.be/rsRjQDrDnY8

E3RG: Building Explicit Emotion-driven Empathetic Response Generation System with Multimodal Large Language Model
Ronghao Lin, Shuai Shen, Weipeng Hu, Qiaolin He, Aolin Xiong, Li Huang, Haifeng Hu, Yap-peng Tan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12854

E3RG: Building Explicit Emotion-driven Empathetic Response Generation System with Multimodal Large Language Model
Multimodal Empathetic Response Generation (MERG) is crucial for building emotionally intelligent human-computer interactions. Although large language models (LLMs) have improved text-based ERG, challenges remain in handling multimodal emotional content and maintaining identity consistency. Thus, we propose E3RG, an Explicit Emotion-driven Empathetic Response Generation System based on multimodal LLMs which decomposes MERG task into three parts: multimodal empathy understanding, empathy memory r…

Manifestations of Empathy in Software Engineering: How, Why, and When It Matters
Hashini Gunatilake, John Grundy, Rashina Hoda, Ingo Mueller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04479 htt…

Manifestations of Empathy in Software Engineering: How, Why, and When It Matters
Empathy plays a crucial role in software engineering (SE), influencing collaboration, communication, and decision-making. While prior research has highlighted the importance of empathy in SE, there is limited understanding of how empathy manifests in SE practice, what motivates SE practitioners to demonstrate empathy, and the factors that influence empathy in SE work. Our study explores these aspects through 22 interviews and a large scale survey with 116 software practitioners. Our findings pr…

Charlie Kirk Probably Deserved To Die by Rachel Donald
In its quest for empathy, the Left has lost its moral clarity
#CharlieKirk

Charlie Kirk Probably Deserved To Die
In its quest for empathy, the Left has lost its moral clarity

Harsh … but also called for. https://universeodon.com/@SrRochardBunson/115186129424152505

The Party of Empathy... I have a bookmark folder on X called "Democrat hate." (David Strom/HotAir)
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/07/06/the-party-of-empathy-n3804511
http://www.memeorandum.com/250706/p39#a250706p39

Sean McVay on cutdown day: 'You want to have the appropriate empathy' and be honest with players https://www.nfl.com/news/sean-mcvay-on-cutdown-day-you-want-to-have-the-appropriate-empathy-and-be-honest-with-players

UPLME: Uncertainty-Aware Probabilistic Language Modelling for Robust Empathy Regression
Md Rakibul Hasan, Md Zakir Hossain, Aneesh Krishna, Shafin Rahman, Tom Gedeon
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03520

UPLME: Uncertainty-Aware Probabilistic Language Modelling for Robust Empathy Regression
Supervised learning for empathy regression is challenged by noisy self-reported empathy scores. While many algorithms have been proposed for learning with noisy labels in textual classification problems, the regression counterpart is relatively under-explored. We propose UPLME, an uncertainty-aware probabilistic language modelling framework to capture label noise in the regression setting of empathy detection. UPLME includes a probabilistic language model that predicts both empathy score and he…

Bleary-eyed children, unaccustomed to early mornings after sleeping in most of the summer, lack the empathy to celebrate their father’s joy that he’ll be going back to bed after they’re on the bus for the first day of school. 😉

Empathy Guidelines for Improving Practitioner Well-being & Software Engineering Practices
Hashini Gunatilake, John Grundy, Rashina Hoda, Ingo Mueller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03846

Empathy Guidelines for Improving Practitioner Well-being & Software Engineering Practices
Empathy is a powerful yet often overlooked element in software engineering (SE), supporting better teamwork, smoother communication, and effective decision-making. In our previous study, we identified a range of practitioner strategies for fostering empathy in SE contexts. Building on these insights, this paper introduces 17 actionable empathy guidelines designed to support practitioners, teams, and organisations. We also explore how these guidelines can be implemented in practice by examining …

You can preach that "empathy is a sin" and rail others up against shared civilisatory achievements and values.
And you can do so for clicks, political influence and a lot - a lot - of money.
And you might do so believing yourself to exist in a world of pure #kayfabe entertainment, a mere show that transforms hate into dopamin without any relation to "ontic" reali…

The Impact of Adaptive Emotional Alignment on Mental State Attribution and User Empathy in HRI
Giorgia Buracchio, Ariele Callegari, Massimo Donini, Cristina Gena, Antonio Lieto, Alberto Lillo, Claudio Mattutino, Alessandro Mazzei, Linda Pigureddu, Manuel Striani, Fabiana Vernero
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02749

The Impact of Adaptive Emotional Alignment on Mental State Attribution and User Empathy in HRI
The paper presents an experiment on the effects of adaptive emotional alignment between agents, considered a prerequisite for empathic communication, in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Using the NAO robot, we investigate the impact of an emotionally aligned, empathic, dialogue on these aspects: (i) the robot's persuasive effectiveness, (ii) the user's communication style, and (iii) the attribution of mental states and empathy to the robot. In an experiment with 42 participants, two conditions we…

"If any of the work, that any of us do, contributes to the stretching of culture, the stretching of boundaries of empathy that’s expected of an audience… that’s the holy grail."
—Riz Ahmed
#acting #coaching

Building Empathy Through the Sounds of 'a World in Motion'
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/crossing-borders-music/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=muz4now/magazine%2…

Building Empathy Through the Sounds of 'a World in Motion'
Audiences at Crossing Borders concerts come to understand refugees and other marginalized communities in a whole new way.

Imagine him sitting, months on end, in an accountability circile in order to be fed. Imagine the confused expression that's basically just his annoying little face. Imagine, for a bit, that tiny face shrinking into that giant head as he listens for the 3rd month in a row to someone shows him videos of starving people in Gaza, shows him hours of surgery video from gunshot wounds he's laughed at, explains the patriarchy to him and why it was destroyed, explains to him why empathy is a good thing and is the bedrock of this new world we've created, explains why we've build a world that centeres carework above all else. Imagine the confusion and agony.
I really wanted that for him, and for every fascist. It's disappointing when they're taken early, but I can't honetly ever say that I find it sad.

Embedding Empathy into Visual Analytics: A Framework for Person-Centred Dementia Care
Rhiannon Owen, Jonathan C. Roberts
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08548 https://

Embedding Empathy into Visual Analytics: A Framework for Person-Centred Dementia Care
Dementia care requires healthcare professionals to balance a patient's medical needs with a deep understanding of their personal needs, preferences, and emotional cues. However, current digital tools prioritise quantitative metrics over empathetic engagement,limiting caregivers ability to develop a deeper personal understanding of their patients. This paper presents an empathy centred visualisation framework, developed through a design study, to address this gap. The framework integrates establ…

Seeing war through the lens of narcissism: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/08/seeing-war-through-the-lens.html

Everything you already knew about MAGA voters... now with more scientific research to back it up.
✅ Trump supporters report higher levels of psychopathy, manipulativeness, callousness, and narcissism
https://www.psypost.org/trump-supporters-r…

Trump supporters report higher levels of psychopathy, manipulativeness, callousness, and narcissism
Support for Donald Trump is linked to darker personality traits, including increased psychopathy and decreased empathy, new research finds. The study also connects conservative political beliefs to lower benevolence, suggesting personality may shape how people engage with politics and ideology.

Worth reading. #ai https://open.substack.com/pub/robertsaltzman/p/whos-flirting-with-your-children?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=e…

Who’s Flirting With Your Children?
An Empty Machine With No Mind, No Empathy, No Care

Orwell was literally a peniless immigrant in France.
It's all there in "Down and Out in Paris and London".
It taught him empathy for the poor, who he wrote about as human beings.
This is the antidote to the xenophobia that was being pedalled in London today.
https://

Mögen Anne Ameri-Siemens und Many Ameri an ihrem Geld doch ersticken.
Und ihre "We explore the things that make us human: curiosity, creativity, empathy, exchange"-Agentur gleich mit.
https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/pan…

Psyche-R1: Towards Reliable Psychological LLMs through Unified Empathy, Expertise, and Reasoning
Chongyuan Dai, Jinpeng Hu, Hongchang Shi, Zhuo Li, Xun Yang, Meng Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10848 …

Psyche-R1: Towards Reliable Psychological LLMs through Unified Empathy, Expertise, and Reasoning
Amidst a shortage of qualified mental health professionals, the integration of large language models (LLMs) into psychological applications offers a promising way to alleviate the growing burden of mental health disorders. Recent reasoning-augmented LLMs have achieved remarkable performance in mathematics and programming, while research in the psychological domain has predominantly emphasized emotional support and empathetic dialogue, with limited attention to reasoning mechanisms that are bene…

Musk Walks Back Chainsaw Wielding Display: 'It Lacked Empathy' (Aysha Diallo/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-01/musk-walks-back-chainsaw-wielding-display-it-lacked-empathy
http://www.memeorandum.com/250701/p41#a250701p41

Exploring Empathy in Software Engineering: Insights from a Grey Literature Analysis of Practitioners' Perspectives
Lidiany Cerqueira, Jo\~ao Pedro Bastos, Danilo Neves, Glauco Carneiro, Rodrigo Sp\'inola, S\'avio Freire, Jos\'e Amancio Macedo Santos, Manoel Mendon\c{c}a
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05325

Exploring Empathy in Software Engineering: Insights from a Grey Literature Analysis of Practitioners' Perspectives
Context. Empathy, a key social skill, is essential for communication and collaboration in SE but remains an under-researched topic. Aims. This study investigates empathy in SE from practitioners' perspectives, aiming to characterize its meaning, identify barriers, discuss practices to overcome them, and explore its effects. Method. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on 55 web articles from DEV and Medium, two communities widely used by practitioners. To strengthen our findings, we con…

"Fuck the algorithms. Principle, integrity, naiveté... call it what you will. They don't care – we do." Ana in Cyberpunk 2077
Empathy and mutual care is part of the friction that AI and other automation tech rationalizes away.

Kind of hard to feel empathy for Russian soldiers being scammed by Russian cops when this is how they transfer blame.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5rm41g34qo
Punching down is the Russian, and now American, theme.

Empathy in multi-generational workplaces starts with understanding we are all shaped by the events we grew up with - Mike Glatz at #BlueTeamCon

Ursprünglicher Beitrag: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jaelqk2nnlzcgoymtnzuty4q/post/3lsr2em57322r

Seen near the bottom of a list:

In late 2020, I wrote an odd little musing of thoughts. Just re-read it today, and I like these lines:
"Love must have compassion and empathy at its beck and call.
As uncomfortable as truth can so often be, it remains true without any believers, without any champions arguing its case.
Pain is, heartrendingly, unavoidable. Misery is an option we can choose willfully by thinking we know everything and have nothing to learn."

Midas Touch but for Pain
some people have the ability to diminish all they touch

New podcast just dropped.
Well, it dropped in June, but I just found out about it. I've listened to the first episode and I hope it's successful because it's doing such important work.
This podcast is about child sexual abuse in the LDS church. The information is presented in a clear way with empathy towards survivors and with the legal details that show just how liable the LDS church is and how its influence on

This attorney has taken up hundreds of child abuse cases against the LDS Church
Washington-based attorney Tim Kosnoff believes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could do more to protect children from abuse.

GenX didn't learn empathy from our parents. We had to learn it on the streets.
#GenX

Generating Proto-Personas through Prompt Engineering: A Case Study on Efficiency, Effectiveness and Empathy
Fernando Ayach, Vitor Lameir\~ao, Raul Le\~ao, Jerfferson Felizardo, Rafael Sobrinho, Vanessa Borges, Patr\'icia Matsubara, Awdren Font\~ao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08594

Generating Proto-Personas through Prompt Engineering: A Case Study on Efficiency, Effectiveness and Empathy
Proto-personas are commonly used during early-stage Product Discovery, such as Lean Inception, to guide product definition and stakeholder alignment. However, the manual creation of proto-personas is often time-consuming, cognitively demanding, and prone to bias. In this paper, we propose and empirically investigate a prompt engineering-based approach to generate proto-personas with the support of Generative AI (GenAI). Our goal is to evaluate the approach in terms of efficiency, effectiveness,…

Synthetically Expressive: Evaluating gesture and voice for emotion and empathy in VR and 2D scenarios
Haoyang Du, Kiran Chhatre, Christopher Peters, Brian Keegan, Rachel McDonnell, Cathy Ennis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23777

Synthetically Expressive: Evaluating gesture and voice for emotion and empathy in VR and 2D scenarios
The creation of virtual humans increasingly leverages automated synthesis of speech and gestures, enabling expressive, adaptable agents that effectively engage users. However, the independent development of voice and gesture generation technologies, alongside the growing popularity of virtual reality (VR), presents significant questions about the integration of these signals and their ability to convey emotional detail in immersive environments. In this paper, we evaluate the influence of real …

From the comments responding to the NYT article on this are several #FAFO responses because we recognize the empathy deficit of a 'proud conservative, but'
'Desperately need these services': Conservative mom blames GOP for cutting son’s Medicaid - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/conservative-gop-medicaid-cuts/

Something to maybe help refill the empathy cup.
"Cory Booker on the politics of fear, the politics of hope, and how to split the difference."
✅ Transcript https://freakonomics.com/podcast/this-country-kicks-my-ass-all-the-time/
▶️ Aud…

“This Country Kicks My Ass All the Time” - Freakonomics
“This Country Kicks My Ass All the Time” - Freakonomics

Considering Empathy: Critical Approaches across Disciplines
https://ift.tt/wUuyd8V
updated: Monday, July 28, 2025 - 12:58pmfull name / name of organization: Diana Ashe & Beverley…
via Input 4 RELCFP

From Stimuli to Minds: Enhancing Psychological Reasoning in LLMs via Bilateral Reinforcement Learning
Yichao Feng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02458 https://…

From Stimuli to Minds: Enhancing Psychological Reasoning in LLMs via Bilateral Reinforcement Learning
Large Language Models show promise in emotion understanding, social reasoning, and empathy, yet they struggle with psychologically grounded tasks that require inferring implicit mental states in context-rich, ambiguous settings. These limitations arise from the absence of theory-aligned supervision and the difficulty of capturing nuanced mental processes in real-world narratives. To address this gap, we leverage expert-labeled, psychologically rich scenarios and propose a trajectory-aware reinf…

Love, empathy and a helping hand...

5 Days, 5 Stories: Using Technology to Promote Empathy in the Workplace
Russell Beale, Eugenia Sergueeva
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19495 https://

5 Days, 5 Stories: Using Technology to Promote Empathy in the Workplace
Empathy is widely recognized as a vital attribute for effective collaboration and communication in the workplace, yet developing empathic skills and fostering it among colleagues remains a challenge. This study explores the potential of a collaborative digital storytelling platform - In Your Shoes - designed to promote empathic listening and interpersonal understanding through the structured exchange of personal narratives. A one-week intervention was conducted with employees from multiple orga…

Design and evaluation of a serious game in virtual reality to increase empathy towards students with phonological dyslexia
Jose Manuel Alcalde-Llergo, Andrea Zingoni, Pilar Aparicio-Martinez, Sara Pinzi, Enrique Yeguas-Bolivar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21283

Design and evaluation of a serious game in virtual reality to increase empathy towards students with phonological dyslexia
Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder estimated to strike approximately 5 to 10 per cent of the population. In particular, phonological dyslexia causes problems in connecting the sounds of words with their written forms. Consequently, affected individuals may encounter issues such as slow reading speed, inaccurate reading, and difficulty decoding unfamiliar words. To address these complexities, the use of compensatory tools and strategies is essential to ensure equitable opportunities for d…

"If any of the work, that any of us do, contributes to the stretching of culture, the stretching of boundaries of empathy that’s expected of an audience… that’s the holy grail."
—Riz Ahmed
#acting #coaching

Empathy in Explanation
Katherine M. Collins, Kartik Chandra, Adrian Weller, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, Joshua B. Tenenbaum
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21081 https://

Empathy in Explanation
Why do we give the explanations we do? Recent work has suggested that we should think of explanation as a kind of cooperative social interaction, between a why-question-asker and an explainer. Here, we apply this perspective to consider the role that emotion plays in this social interaction. We develop a computational framework for modeling explainers who consider the emotional impact an explanation might have on a listener. We test our framework by using it to model human intuitions about how …

Mentalic Net: Development of RAG-based Conversational AI and Evaluation Framework for Mental Health Support
Anandi Dutta, Shivani Mruthyunjaya, Jessica Saddington, Kazi Sifatul Islam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04456

Mentalic Net: Development of RAG-based Conversational AI and Evaluation Framework for Mental Health Support
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has unlocked boundless possibilities, along with significant challenges. In response, we developed a mental health support chatbot designed to augment professional healthcare, with a strong emphasis on safe and meaningful application. Our approach involved rigorous evaluation, covering accuracy, empathy, trustworthiness, privacy, and bias. We employed a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) framework, integrated prompt engineering, and fine-tuned a p…

Replaced article(s) found for cs.HC. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.HC/new
[1/2]:
- Empathy Detection from Text, Audiovisual, Audio or Physiological Signals: A Systematic Review of ...
Md Rakibul Hasan, Md Zakir Hossain, Shreya Ghosh, Aneesh Krishna, Tom Gedeon

Considering Empathy: Critical Approaches across Disciplines
https://ift.tt/zFEG0mX
updated: Monday, July 28, 2025 - 12:58pmfull name / name of organization: Diana Ashe & Beverley…
via Input 4 RELCFP

Exploring the Effects of Chatbot Anthropomorphism and Human Empathy on Human Prosocial Behavior Toward Chatbots
Jingshu Li, Zicheng Zhu, Renwen Zhang, Yi-Chieh Lee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20748

Exploring the Effects of Chatbot Anthropomorphism and Human Empathy on Human Prosocial Behavior Toward Chatbots
Chatbots are increasingly integrated into people's lives and are widely used to help people. Recently, there has also been growing interest in the reverse direction-humans help chatbots-due to a wide range of benefits including better chatbot performance, human well-being, and collaborative outcomes. However, little research has explored the factors that motivate people to help chatbots. To address this gap, we draw on the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) framework to examine how chatbot anth…

A Robot That Listens: Enhancing Self-Disclosure and Engagement Through Sentiment-based Backchannels and Active Listening
Hieu Tran, Go-Eum Cha, Sooyeon Jeong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07873

A Robot That Listens: Enhancing Self-Disclosure and Engagement Through Sentiment-based Backchannels and Active Listening
As social robots get more deeply integrated intoour everyday lives, they will be expected to engage in meaningful conversations and exhibit socio-emotionally intelligent listening behaviors when interacting with people. Active listening and backchanneling could be one way to enhance robots' communicative capabilities and enhance their effectiveness in eliciting deeper self-disclosure, providing a sense of empathy,and forming positive rapport and relationships with people.Thus, we developed an L…

Replaced article(s) found for cs.CL. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CL/new
[3/3]:
- Psyche-R1: Towards Reliable Psychological LLMs through Unified Empathy, Expertise, and Reasoning
Chongyuan Dai, Jinpeng Hu, Hongchang Shi, Zhuo Li, Xun Yang, Meng Wang

PAL: Designing Conversational Agents as Scalable, Cooperative Patient Simulators for Palliative-Care Training
Neil K. R. Sehgal, Hita Kambhamettu, Allen Chang, Andrew Zhu, Lyle Ungar, Sharath Chandra Guntuku
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02122

PAL: Designing Conversational Agents as Scalable, Cooperative Patient Simulators for Palliative-Care Training
Effective communication in serious illness and palliative care is essential but often under-taught due to limited access to training resources like standardized patients. We present PAL (Palliative Assisted Learning-bot), a conversational system that simulates emotionally nuanced patient interactions and delivers structured feedback grounded in an existing empathy-based framework. PAL supports text and voice modalities and is designed to scaffold clinical skill-building through repeated, low-co…