Unpacking the Informational Bases of Empathic Accuracy

Perceivers' ability to correctly identify the internal states of social targets-known as empathic accuracy (EA)-is critical to social interactions, but little work has examined the specific types of information that support EA. In the current study, social targets varying in trait emotional expressivity were videotaped while discussing emotional autobiographical events. Perceivers watched these videos and inferred targets' affect while having access to only visual or auditory information, or both. EA was assessed as the correlation of perceivers' inference and targets' self-ratings. Results suggest that auditory, and especially verbal information, is critical to EA. Furthermore, targets' expressivity predicted both target behavior and EA, an effect influenced by the valence of the events they discussed. Specifically, expressive targets produced more nonverbal negative cues, and higher levels of EA when perceivers could only see them discussing negative events; expressive targets also produced more positive verbal cues, and higher levels of EA when perceivers could only hear them discussing positive events. These results are discussed in relation to social display rules and clinical disorders involving social deficits.