Georgia Tech Research Shows Listening to Heartbeats ‘Boosts’ Empathy

In a paper published in early May at CHI 2021 — the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems — Georgia Tech researchers hypothesized that hearing the heartbeat of another person would increase the listener’s empathic connection with that person. Lead investigator Mike Winters, a recent Georgia Tech Ph.D. graduate of the School of Music, had also worked with School of Psychology Professor Bruce Walker in the latter's Sonification Lab. (Walker is also with the School of Interactive Computing.)