Analyzing Generation and Cognition of Emotional Congruence using Empathizing-systemizing Quotient

Abstract

Emotional congruence is a definition of emotional empathy. However, little is known about what types of people are more likely to be emotionally matched with others, and how they perceive emotional congruence. This paper proposes a cognitive model of emotional congruence assuming that people judge their emotional congruence with others based on interpersonal distance by putting the self and the other in emotional dimensions. We asked participants to engage in discussion with each other, and to rate their emotional congruence level in addition to their own emotional states in a valence-arousal space. We observed that i) participants with lower Empathizing Quotient scores exhibited a shorter emotional Euclidean distance from others, ii) when combined together, the overall results for all participants showed significant goodness of fit to the proposed model, and iii) those with higher Systemizing Quotient scores showed stronger goodness of fit.