Can pupillometry contribute to the assessment of empathy?

Nowadays, therapists frequently use questionnaires to assess empathy. However, those empathy questionnaires are sometimes not reliable screening tools. The patients can omit, forget, misunderstand, or overestimate some elements. The pupillometry is by contrast, a more objective and reliable measure on which the subjects have no control. Many studies have previously shown that the pupil size is influenced by the emotions. Moreover, being empathic means being able to understand and share the others’ feelings and emotions. We therefore tried to provoke empathy by showing pictures, triggering empathic feelings, to 32 participants while their pupil diameters were recorded. The goal of this study was to investigate whether a questionnaire, the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE), can be replaced by the analysis of the pupil response to the presentation of pictures. The pupil response was analysed in function of different factors: onset of the images, luminance, change in orientation, valence, arousal and empathy group. The results show a correlation between the empathy score and the onset of the images. This encourages further study and has to be replicated before drawing positive conclusions about the possibility of replacing the QCAE by pupillometry. Moreover, several methodological issues have to be addressed.