Simulated Empathy and Human Response: A Comparative Analysis of AI and Human Emotional Interaction

Abstract

This qualitative comparative study examines how ChatGPT-4o simulates empathy when responding to emotionally charged English in an EFL context. It aims to compare artificial intelligence and human responses in emotional recognition, pragmatic tone, empathetic support, and linguistic authenticity. The study is significant because EFL interaction requires learners to interpret affective cues while selecting socially and culturally appropriate language. Fifty prompts generated 50 AI responses and 1,000 human responses from 20 advanced-level EFL learners; the data were organized into 50 prompt-level comparison sets and analyzed through qualitative content analysis and comparative discourse analysis. Two trained coders applied a hybrid framework and achieved substantial agreement (Cohen’s κ = .86). ChatGPT recognized the intended emotion in 88% of its responses, used an appropriate tone in 84%, and displayed empathetic and pragmatically relevant support in 90%. Performance weakened with implicit, mixed, and culturally nuanced cues, while supportive language was sometimes formulaic or overly therapeutic. Human responses were more varied, culturally situated, and pragmatically flexible. The study recommends using ChatGPT as a teacher-mediated supplementary resource for emotional vocabulary and pragmatic practice, with explicit attention to cultural context, recurrent response formulas, and the distinction between simulated and human empathy.