APTNESS: Incorporating Appraisal Theory and Emotion Support Strategies for Empathetic Response Generation

Yuxuan Hu, Minghuan Tan, Chenwei Zhang, Zixuan Li, Xiaodan Liang, Min Yang*, Chengming Li*, Xiping Hu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Empathetic response generation is designed to comprehend the emotions of others and select the most appropriate strategies to assist them in resolving emotional challenges. Empathy can be categorized into cognitive empathy and affective empathy. The former pertains to the ability to understand and discern the emotional issues and situations of others, while the latter involves the capacity to provide comfort. To enhance one's empathetic abilities, it is essential to develop both these aspects. Therefore, we develop an innovative framework that combines retrieval augmentation and emotional support strategy integration. Our framework starts with the introduction of a comprehensive emotional palette for empathy. We then apply appraisal theory to decompose this palette and create a database of empathetic responses. This database serves as an external resource and enhances the LLM's empathy by integrating semantic retrieval mechanisms. Moreover, our framework places a strong emphasis on the proper articulation of response strategies. By incorporating emotional support strategies, we aim to enrich the model's capabilities in both cognitive and affective empathy, leading to a more nuanced and comprehensive empathetic response. Finally, we extract datasets ED and ET from the empathetic dialogue dataset EmpatheticDialogues and ExTES based on dialogue length. Experiments demonstrate that our framework can enhance the empathy ability of LLMs from both cognitive and affective empathy perspectives. Our code is released at https://github.com/CAS-SIAT-XinHai/APTNESS.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCIKM 2024 - Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages900-909
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9798400704369
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Oct 2024
Externally publishedYes
Event33rd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, CIKM 2024 - Boise, United States
Duration: 21 Oct 202425 Oct 2024

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Proceedings
ISSN (Print)2155-0751

Conference

Conference33rd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, CIKM 2024
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoise
Period21/10/2425/10/24

Keywords

  • appraisal theory
  • emotional support strategy
  • empathetic response generation
  • empathy
  • retrieval augmented generation

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