The good, the bad, and the cringy: Introducing the EmpaToM-pos and EmpaToM-embarrass as tools for assessing empathy and theory of mind in diverse emotional contexts

Empathizing and mentalizing are crucial to social understanding, yet few instruments capture these processes across a broad emotional spectrum. The EmpaToM is a video-based paradigm that independently measures empathy and theory of mind (ToM) and can additionally incorporate a prosociality measure. As its current form is limited to negatively valenced emotional contexts, we introduce two expanded German versions: EmpaToM-pos, featuring positively valenced narrations, and EmpaToM-embarrass, featuring embarrassing narrations, alongside the original neutral and negative conditions. In two pilot studies (Ns = 28/27), we tested novel video stimuli and corresponding questions, revised them based on the data, and subsequently evaluated them in two higher-powered studies (Ns = 60/55). Results confirmed successful empathy induction in all emotional conditions: Participants reported feeling worse after negative, more joyful after positive, and more embarrassed after embarrassing narrations (compared to all other valence conditions, respectively). Emotional valence also influenced prosociality: Negative narrations prompted the highest willingness to invest, but positive and embarrassing narrations also elicited greater prosociality than the neutral condition. Both expanded versions supported reliable ToM assessment without ceiling effects and with similar performance levels in the ToM and control conditions. Analyses further revealed that, on an interindividual level, empathic resonance in both negative and positive contexts was positively correlated with the degree of prosociality, highlighting the interrelation between empathizing and social decision-making. By incorporating positive and embarrassing emotional contexts, the EmpaToM-pos and EmpaToM-embarrass broaden the range of assessable social-emotional experiences, offering new opportunities to investigate empathy, ToM, and prosociality in more ecologically valid and diverse settings.