[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-140478-105":59,"doc-detail-140478-en":124},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":117,"head_meta":119,"extra_data":121,"updated_unix":123},105,"en","pouring-your-heart-out-investigating-the-role-of-figurative-language-in-online-expressions-of-empathy","Pouring Your Heart Out - Investigating the Role of Figurative Language in Online Expressions of Empathy","","Empathy functions as a social mechanism for supporting emotional connection, including within online communities, yet limited understanding exists about how such empathy is expressed in text and which linguistic factors improve automated detection. This study examines a complex subcategory of figurative language—metaphor, idiom, and hyperbole—in empathy expressions. Extensive experiments show that adding figurative-language features improves empathy detection, achieving maximum F1 of 0.942 for posts without empathy and 0.809 for posts with empathy.",{"@graph":69,"@context":116},[70,84,99],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/pouring-your-heart-out-investigating-the-role-of-figurative-language-in-online-expressions-of-empathy/140478/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"author":86,"headline":65,"publisher":89,"fileFormat":92,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":93,"datePublished":93,"encodingFormat":92,"isAccessibleForFree":94,"interactionStatistic":95},"DigitalDocument",{"name":87,"@type":88},"Hazel","Person",{"url":74,"name":90,"@type":91},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-08-24",true,{"@type":96,"interactionType":97,"userInteractionCount":4},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":98},"ViewAction",{"@type":100,"mainEntity":101},"FAQPage",[102,108,112],{"name":103,"@type":104,"acceptedAnswer":105},"What is the main focus of the study?","Question",{"text":106,"@type":107},"The study investigates how figurative language—specifically metaphor, idioms, and hyperbole—contributes to expressions of empathy in online text.","Answer",{"name":109,"@type":104,"acceptedAnswer":110},"How do figurative-language features affect empathy detection performance?",{"text":111,"@type":107},"Incorporating features for metaphor, idiom, and hyperbole improves empathy detection models, reaching maximum F1 scores of 0.942 (without empathy) and 0.809 (with empathy).",{"name":113,"@type":104,"acceptedAnswer":114},"Why is the paper interested in domain-specific empathy detection?",{"text":115,"@type":107},"General datasets across many conditions limit nuanced conclusions, so the work argues for more focused investigation that better captures linguistic signals of empathy in specialized contexts.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":118,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":90,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":120,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":122,"site_id":62},140478,1787576049,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":125},{"doc_id":122,"user_id":126,"nickname":87,"user_avatar":127,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":128,"file_id":129,"file_url":130,"file_type":131,"file_size":132,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":133,"language":134,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":135,"faqs":136,"seo_title":137,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":123,"read_time":138},137441390410,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/2000252f4ab5702993?_k=1776741390130283984","Pouring Your Heart Out: Investigating the Role of Figurative Language in  \nOnline Expressions of Empathy  \nGyeongeun Lee and Christina Wong and Meghan Guo and Natalie Parde  \nDepartment of Computer Science  \nUniversity of Illinois at Chicago  \n{glee87, cwong49, mguo13, [parde}@uic.edu](parde}@uic.edu)  \nAbstract  \nEmpathy is a social mechanism used to support and strengthen emotional connection with others, including in online communities. However, little is currently known about the nature of these online expressions, nor the particular factors that may lead to their improved detection. In this work, we study the role of a specific and complex subcategory of linguistic phenomena, figurative language, in online expressions of empathy. Our extensive experiments reveal that incorporating features regarding the use of metaphor, idiom, and hyperbole into empathy detection models improves their performance, resulting in impressive maximum F 1 scores of 0.942 and 0.809 for identifying posts without and with empathy, respectively.  \n1 Introduction  \nEmpathy is a complex multidimensional communicative tool that involves the capacity to recognize and respond to the emotional experiences of individuals seeking help (Davis et al., 1980) . It is employed in therapeutic interactions (Elliott et al., 2018), including in the digital realm where millions seek solace and support within online communities (Eysenbach et al., 2004) . Interest in online empathy has surged recently, leading to the creation of datasets in generalized domains like mental health (Sharma et al., 2020 ; Hosseini and Caragea, 2021b) . However, these broad investigations of empathy across diverse conditions make it difficult to draw nuanced conclusions regarding the nature of empathetic language. Most investigations arising from large-scale initiatives (e.g., shared tasks organized by Barriere et al. (2022, 2023)) have predominantly relied on black-box approaches and focused on emotions and user demographics, hindering the development of a more comprehensive understanding of empathy in online environmentsand underscoring the need for further research.  \nWe conduct a two-pronged investigation to address these gaps. We (1) focus our study on domainspecific detection of expressed empathy (BarrettLennard, 1981) related to the emotional and psychological effects associated with acne. By delving into this specific condition known to affect social and mental well-being (Molla et al., 2021), our work paves the way for more specialized empathy understanding and support mechanisms. We also (2) investigate the role of figurative language in expressions of empathy within this dataset, addressing an unexplored aspect of contemporary empathy detection research. We further demonstrate that integrating features describing the presence of metaphor, idiom, and hyperbole enhances empathy detection performance across feature-based and pretrained language model (PLM) classifiers, offering a deeper understanding of empathetic expressions beyond emotional and demographic indicators. Our key contributions include:  \n• We detect empathy in a new dataset, AcnEmpathize, with over 12K posts from an acnefocused online forum.  \n• We analyze the role of figurative language in empathetic expressions, focusing on idioms, metaphors, and hyperboles.  \n• We demonstrate enhanced empathy detection performance by integrating figurative language features, motivating the need for more focused study of the linguistic phenomena giving rise to empathy.  \nWe hope that the outcomes from this research inspire further work towards improved AI-driven support systems, including empathetic chatbots tailored to specific needs. Additionally, our research may provide avenues for enhancing empathy training and feedback mechanisms for peer supporters in online communities, ultimately elevating the quality of support available to those seeking help.  \n519  \nProceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computati","cbCaigDXTXdzO8M0","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigDXTXdzO8M0","pdf",218190,11,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n# Background\n## Datasets for Empathy Detection\n## Text-based Empathy Detection Methods","[{\"question\":\"What is the main focus of the study?\",\"answer\":\"The study investigates how figurative language—specifically metaphor, idioms, and hyperbole—contributes to expressions of empathy in online text.\"},{\"question\":\"How do figurative-language features affect empathy detection performance?\",\"answer\":\"Incorporating features for metaphor, idiom, and hyperbole improves empathy detection models, reaching maximum F1 scores of 0.942 (without empathy) and 0.809 (with empathy).\"},{\"question\":\"Why is the paper interested in domain-specific empathy detection?\",\"answer\":\"General datasets across many conditions limit nuanced conclusions, so the work argues for more focused investigation that better captures linguistic signals of empathy in specialized contexts.\"}]","Pouring Your Heart Out - Investigating the Role of Figurative Language in Online Expressions of Empathy | PDF",28]