Expressing empathy can be taught – new research on counselling reveals

Establishing trust in counselling relies heavily on empathy, yet the acoustic cues that communicate empathic intent remain underexplored, according to academics from the University of Chichester.

Research by psychology and counselling experts, Rylee Spooner, Jo Taylor-Jones, and Valentina Canessa-Pollard, investigates how altering vocals influences the perception of empathy in both trained and untrained individuals.

In a two-part study, 10 trained female counsellors and 10 untrained female speakers read sentences in their normal, most empathic and least empathic voices. Overall, speakers exhibited slower speech, higher initial pitch, greater pitch variation and higher mean pitch in empathic voices, with differential use of cues with training. A playback task with 207 listeners, unaware of speakers’ identities, found both trained and untrained speakers received higher empathy ratings for empathic voices.

Dr Canessa-Pollard, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, said: “Results showed that both trained and untrained speakers were perceived as more empathic when using empathic vocals, with counsellors consistently rated higher across all conditions.

“The study suggests adults can intentionally modify their vocal behaviour to convey empathy, hinting at the potential learnability of this skill. This offers implications for training in counselling, counselling psychology and related professions.”

The article is now available online, here.