Cognitive empathy, the ability to understand others' perspectives, is essential for effective communication, reducing biases, and constructive negotiation. However, this skill is declining in a performance-driven society, which prioritizes efficiency over perspective-taking. Here, the training of cognitive empathy is challenging because it is a subtle, hard-to-perceive soft skill. To address this, we developed CoEmpaTeam, a VR-based system that enables users to train their cognitive empathy by using LLM-driven avatars with different personalities. Through dynamic role play, users actively engage in perspective-taking, experiencing situations through another person's eyes. CoEmpaTeam deploys three avatars who significantly differ in their personality, validated by a technical evaluation and an online experiment (n=90). Next, we evaluated the system through a lab experiment with 32 participants who performed three sessions across two weeks, followed by a one-week diary study. Our results showed a significant increase in cognitive empathy, which, according to participants, transferred into their real lives.

翻译：认知共情，即理解他人观点的能力，对于有效沟通、减少偏见以及建设性谈判至关重要。然而，在一个以绩效为导向、优先考虑效率而非观点采择的社会中，这项技能正在衰退。认知共情的训练具有挑战性，因为它是一种微妙且难以察觉的软技能。为此，我们开发了CoEmpaTeam，这是一个基于虚拟现实（VR）的系统，它允许用户通过使用具有不同个性的、由大语言模型（LLM）驱动的虚拟化身来训练他们的认知共情能力。通过动态角色扮演，用户可以主动进行观点采择，从他人的视角体验情境。CoEmpaTeam部署了三个在个性上存在显著差异的虚拟化身，这一点已通过技术评估和一项在线实验（n=90）得到验证。随后，我们通过一项实验室实验对系统进行了评估，32名参与者在两周内完成了三个阶段的训练，并随后进行了一周的日记研究。我们的结果表明，参与者的认知共情能力得到了显著提升，并且据参与者反馈，这种提升已迁移至他们的现实生活中。