mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Harnessing the Power of Large Language Models for Empathetic Response Generation: Empirical Investigations and Improvements

arXiv 2310.05140 ↗First posted 8 Oct 2023cs.CL cs.AIcited by 42

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Abstract (arXiv)

Empathetic dialogue is an indispensable part of building harmonious social relationships and contributes to the development of a helpful AI. Previous approaches are mainly based on fine small-scale language models. With the advent of ChatGPT, the application effect of large language models (LLMs) in this field has attracted great attention. This work empirically investigates the performance of LLMs in generating empathetic responses and proposes three improvement methods of semantically similar in-context learning, two-stage interactive generation, and combination with the knowledge base. Extensive experiments show that LLMs can significantly benefit from our proposed methods and is able to achieve state-of-the-art performance in both automatic and human evaluations. Additionally, we explore the possibility of GPT-4 simulating human evaluators.

Key facts. Cited by 42 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 30 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2023.

Builds on

30 of 48 references.

References · 30

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
  2. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  3. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
  4. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
  5. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  6. 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
  7. 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,512
  8. 2023Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4cited by 2,592
  9. 2021What Makes Good In-Context Examples for GPT-3?cited by 1,195
  10. 2015A Diversity-Promoting Objective Function for Neural Conversation Modelscited by 1,077
  11. 2020Recipes for building an open-domain chatbotcited by 593
  12. 2022Towards a Unified Multi-Dimensional Evaluator for Text Generationcited by 264
18 more
  1. 2020COMET-ATOMIC 2020: On Symbolic and Neural Commonsense Knowledge Graphscited by 254
  2. 2020A Computational Approach to Understanding Empathy Expressed in Text-Based Mental Health Supportcited by 182
  3. 2020MIME: MIMicking Emotions for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 114
  4. 2019MoEL: Mixture of Empathetic Listenerscited by 91
  5. 2021CEM: Commonsense-aware Empathetic Response Generationcited by 89
  6. 2020A Taxonomy of Empathetic Response Intents in Human Social Conversationscited by 51
  7. 2020Knowledge Bridging for Empathetic Dialogue Generationcited by 50
  8. 2021Perspective-taking and Pragmatics for Generating Empathetic Responses Focused on Emotion Causescited by 43
  9. 2020Generate, Delete and Rewrite: A Three-Stage Framework for Improving Persona Consistency of Dialogue Generationcited by 41
  10. 2022Empathetic Dialogue Generation via Sensitive Emotion Recognition and Sensible Knowledge Selectioncited by 19
  11. 2022CASE: Aligning Coarse-to-Fine Cognition and Affection for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 18
  12. 2022Don't Lose Yourself! Empathetic Response Generation via Explicit Self-Other Awarenesscited by 16
  13. 2023Think Twice: A Human-like Two-stage Conversational Agent for Emotional Response Generationcited by 14
  14. 2023Improving Empathetic Dialogue Generation by Dynamically Infusing Commonsense Knowledgecited by 12
  15. 2022Emp-RFT: Empathetic Response Generation via Recognizing Feature Transitions between Utterancescited by 11
  16. 2022EmpHi: Generating Empathetic Responses with Human-like Intentscited by 9
  17. 2023DiffusEmp: A Diffusion Model-Based Framework with Multi-Grained Control for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 9
  18. 2023Empathetic Response Generation via Emotion Cause Transition Graphcited by 8

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 20; 2025: 15; 2026: 5.

42 papers.

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  1. 2024CPsyCoun: A Report-based Multi-turn Dialogue Reconstruction and Evaluation Framework for Chinese Psychological Counselingcited by 89
  2. 2025EmoBench-M: Benchmarking Emotional Intelligence for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 32
  3. 2024Are Large Language Models More Empathetic than Humans?cited by 18
  4. 2024Position: Towards Bidirectional Human-AI Alignmentcited by 18
  5. 2024APTNESS: Incorporating Appraisal Theory and Emotion Support Strategies for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 12
  6. 2024The Illusion of Empathy: How AI Chatbots Shape Conversation Perceptioncited by 12
  7. 2024Cause-Aware Empathetic Response Generation via Chain-of-Thought Fine-Tuningcited by 11
  8. 2024Synth-Empathy: Towards High-Quality Synthetic Empathy Datacited by 10
  9. 2023Sibyl: Empowering Empathetic Dialogue Generation in Large Language Models via Sensible and Visionary Commonsense Inferencecited by 9
  10. 2024Recent Advancement of Emotion Cognition in Large Language Modelscited by 9
  11. 2024Is ChatGPT More Empathetic than Humans?cited by 8
  12. 2024Empathy Level Alignment via Reinforcement Learning for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 8
30 more
  1. 2023Rational Sensibility: LLM Enhanced Empathetic Response Generation Guided by Self-presentation Theorycited by 7
  2. 2024Should We Fine-Tune or RAG? Evaluating Different Techniques to Adapt LLMs for Dialoguecited by 7
  3. 2024A Review of Human Emotion Synthesis Based on Generative Technologycited by 7
  4. 2025The Rise of Darkness: Safety-Utility Trade-Offs in Role-Playing Dialogue Agentscited by 7
  5. 2024Applying and Evaluating Large Language Models in Mental Health Care: A Scoping Review of Human-Assessed Generative Taskscited by 6
  6. 2024ReflectDiffu:Reflect between Emotion-intent Contagion and Mimicry for Empathetic Response Generation via a RL-Diffusion Frameworkcited by 6
  7. 2025The Pursuit of Empathy: Evaluating Small Language Models for PTSD Dialogue Supportcited by 6
  8. 2025AI Agent Behavioral Sciencecited by 6
  9. 2024Stephanie: Step-by-Step Dialogues for Mimicking Human Interactions in Social Conversationscited by 5
  10. 2024TOOL-ED: Enhancing Empathetic Response Generation with the Tool Calling Capability of LLMcited by 5
  11. 2025PersonaFuse: A Personality Activation-Driven Framework for Enhancing Human-LLM Interactionscited by 5
  12. 2024EmPO: Emotion Grounding for Empathetic Response Generation through Preference Optimizationcited by 4
  13. 2024Strada-LLM: Graph LLM for traffic predictioncited by 3
  14. 2025Being Kind Isn't Always Being Safe: Diagnosing Affective Hallucination in LLMscited by 3
  15. 2025Grounded in Reality: Learning and Deploying Proactive LLM from Offline Logscited by 3
  16. 2026MICA: Multi-granularity Intertemporal Credit Assignment for Long-Horizon Emotional Support Dialoguecited by 3
  17. 2025E3RG: Building Explicit Emotion-driven Empathetic Response Generation System with Multimodal Large Language Modelcited by 2
  18. 2025ClaimIQ at CheckThat! 2025: Comparing Prompted and Fine-Tuned Language Models for Verifying Numerical Claimscited by 2
  19. 2025Fine-Grained Emotion Recognition via In-Context Learningcited by 2
  20. 2026From Stateless to Situated: Building a Psychological World for LLM-Based Agentscited by 2
  21. 2024E-ICL: Enhancing Fine-Grained Emotion Recognition through the Lens of Prototype Theorycited by 1
  22. 2025From Measurement to Expertise: Empathetic Expert Adapters for Context-Based Empathy in Conversational AI Agentscited by 1
  23. 2026ComPASS: Towards Personalized Agentic Social Support via Tool-Augmented Companionshipcited by 1
  24. 2024Efficient-Empathy: Towards Efficient and Effective Selection of Empathy Datacited by 0
  25. 2025Bridging Cognition and Emotion: Empathy-Driven Multimodal Misinformation Detectioncited by 0
  26. 2025Automated Meta Prompt Engineering for Alignment with the Theory of Mindcited by 0
  27. 2025AI PsyRoom: Artificial Intelligence Platform for Segmented Yearning and Reactive Outcome Optimization Methodcited by 0
  28. 2025E-THER: A Multimodal Dataset for Empathic AI -- Towards Emotional Mismatch Awarenesscited by 0
  29. 2026Towards Emotion Consistency Analysis of Large Language Models in Emotional Conversational Contextscited by 0
  30. 2026Self-Stigma Is Not a Monolith, but Generic Empathy Is: Persona-Conditioned LLM Support for People Who Use Drugscited by 0