"I See You": Comparing the Effects of Affective Empathy and Cognitive Empathy on Drivers' Affective States and Driving Behavior in Frustrating Driving Contexts

Despite extensive analysis into the relationship between emotion and driving, the effects of empathy on driving remain less explored. This paper focuses on the role of empathy, particularly cognitive and affective empathy, as a potential mitigator of negative emotional states. We investigated how empathic responses from an invehicle agent influence a driver’s emotional state and their driving performance through a between-subject simulation study. Thirty participants were assigned one of three in-vehicle agents: cognitive empathy style, affective empathy style, and non-empathy style agent. They drove using a driving simulator and received empathic responses from in-vehicle agents when adverse events happened. The results showed that affective empathy style in-vehicle agent more helped driver drive safely with lower negative affect states compared to cognitive empathy style agent and no agent.We expect that the findings of this study could provide valuable insight for designing empathic interactions between a driver and a vehicle.