skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Paths to Empathy: Heterogeneous Effects of Reading Personal Stories Online
Every day people share personal stories online, reaching millions of users around the world through blogs, social media and news websites. Why are some of these stories more attractive to readers than others? What features of these personal narratives make readers empathize with the storyteller? Do the readers’ personal characteristics and experiences play a role in feeling connection to the story they read? Experimental studies in psychology show that there are several factors that increase empathy in the aggregate, but there is a need for deeper understanding of empathetic feelings at the individual level of storyteller, story, and reader. Here, we present the design and analysis of a survey that studied the impact of story features and reader predispositions and perceptions on the empathy they feel when reading online stories. We use causal trees to find the individual-level causal factors for empathy and to understand the heterogeneity in the treatment effects. One of our main findings is that empathy is contextual and, while reader personality plays a significant role in evoking empathy, the mood of the reader prior to reading the story and linguistic story features have an impact as well. The results of our analyses can be used to help people create content that others care about and to help them communicate more effectively  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1801644
PAR ID:
10148687
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA)
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; (, In submission)
    Extending the benefits of online reading to people with reading disabilities such as dyslexia requires broader research on reading behavior in addition to existing small-scale eye-tracking studies. We conduct the first large-scale mixed-methods study of the unique reading challenges of people with dyslexia. We combine in-person interviews (N=6), online surveys (N=566) and a novel browser-based tool able to measure detailed reading behavior remotely on a controlled set of five pages (N=477) or as a browser extension (N=89) collecting long-term reading behavior data on self-selected pages. We find a variety of text and page layout factors that pose challenges to readers with and without dyslexia, and identify in-browser reading behaviors associated with dyslexia. Findings point toward improvements to technologies for identifying struggling readers, and to ways to improve the layout and appearance of online articles to improve reading ease for people with and without dyslexia. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Annual Conference and Exposition, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE))
    null (Ed.)
    There is growing evidence that emphasizing the social and personal contexts of engineering can open up the field to people who have been conspicuously underrepresented, particularly women and girls. Recent research and advances in educational policy have advocated for reframing engineering education to prioritize social responsibility, empathy, and care for others as integral aspects of engineering practice. But how do we measure things like empathy in engineering practices of younger children? This paper features work from a three-year design-based research project in which we used narrative elements to frame engineering problems in ways that evoked empathy for others’ needs, and examined the intersections between expressions of empathy and engineering design practices among girls ages 7-14. This paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings of this approach, and our methods for observing empathy and engineering practices in this age group. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; (, Association for Computational Linguistics)
    Empathy is a social mechanism used to support and strengthen emotional connection with others, including in online communities. However, little is currently known about the nature of these online expressions, nor the particular factors that may lead to their improved detection. In this work, we study the role of a specific and complex subcategory of linguistic phenomena, figurative language, in online expressions of empathy. Our extensive experiments reveal that incorporating features regarding the use of metaphor, idiom, and hyperbole into empathy detection models improves their performance, resulting in impressive maximum F1 scores of 0.942 and 0.809 for identifying posts without and with empathy, respectively. 
    more » « less
  4. ; (, Journal for theoretical marginal mathematics education)
    In this piece, we share our experiences as we navigate the whiteness of academia. Each of us has taken different pathways to get where we are today as gears within the academic machine. We wrote dangerously to aid our processes of unlearning and (re)learning to disrupt mechanisms of this cruel (white) apparatus. As counterstories do, we hope to be able to help others reflect and determine ways to act against an institution promoting assimilation and erasure of historically and contemporarily excluded populations. Our counterstory centers around the memories of a mathematics education doctoral student, Lily. Her story is presented in a back-and-forth between time periods and gives the reader an opportunity to have their own unique experience with the reading. Instead of a discussion and conclusion, we provide the reader the opportunity to stop or listen to our discussion, available online. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society)
    Culbertson, J.; Perfors, A; Rabagliati, H.; Ramenzoni, V. (Ed.)
    Learning to read is a critical skill; yet only a small portion of children in the United States are reading at or above grade level. Attention is one crucial process that affects the acquisition of reading skills. The process involves selectively choosing task relevant information and requires monitoring competing demands. Many books for beginning readers include illustrations, but this design choice may require learners to split their attention between multiple sources of information. This study employed eye tracking to examine whether embedding text within illustrations in children’s e-books inadvertently induces attentional competition. The results showed that spatially separating illustrations from the text in beginning reader books reduces attentional competition and improves children’s reading comprehension. This study shows that changes to the design of books for beginning readers can help promote literacy development in children. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email