The relationship between verbal route descriptions and personal characteristics of empathy

Empathy is important for good verbal navigation instructions. The present study examined the relationship between verbal route descriptions and personal characteristics of empathy using a verbal navigation task and the Japanese Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI-J). In the verbal navigation task, participants were presented a maze map and were instructed to provide verbal route instructions to reach a goal, to a person who is lost in the maze. Then, the participants answered a questionnaire about their own navigation abilities and responded to the IRI-J. The descriptive data were objectively evaluated with reference to the following three points: types of spatial description (survey or route), consideration for the other person’s point of view, and unambiguity of instruction. We analyzed the relationships between the descriptive traits and scores on the two questionnaires, and found that the three points were good predictors for some empathy-related factors measured by the IRI-J.