160 Chapter 6 a friend died of a brain hemorrhage) emotional autobiographical stories. Within 30 minutes after the stories of the targets were videotaped, the targets watched their personal recordings and continuously rated how they felt in their videos by using a dial. The dial included a Likert scale ranging from 1 (extremely negative) to 9 (extremely positive). Additional information about task development can be found in aan het Rot and Hogenelst (2014). The targets varied in their self-reported emotional expressivity as assessed with the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ; Gross and John (1997)). The BEQ consists of 16 items that are answered on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Mean BEQ scores were calculated by averaging all items and ranged in the present target sample from 3.50 – 5.97. Higher scores represent higher emotional expressivity. Prior studies reported a significant positive association between BEQ scores and EA (aan het Rot & Hogenelst, 2014; Zaki et al., 2008). Since the original item of targets on the BEQ could not be retrieved the reliability of the scale in the current sample could not be computed. Yet, previous studies found good validity and reliability for the instrument (α = .86) (Kupper et al., 2020), and there is no reason to expect any differences between these studies and the use of the BEQ in the present sample. The present study includes a shortened version of the EA task with a duration of ±25 minutes instead of the original 50 minutes. This was done due to time constraints as the task was part of a larger study protocol. The task included a subset of 10 videos, consisting of five positive and five negative autobiographical stories from six distinct targets (three males, three females) that derived from a pilot study in which we tested the feasibility of the EA task in combination with eye tracking (Supplement S6.2). The participants in the present study (perceivers) were asked to watch all 10 videos and were instructed to imagine that they were sitting on the other side of the table of the targets while listening to their autobiographical stories. At the same time, they continuously rated how they thought the target was feeling while narrating, using the same dial as the targets used to rate their feelings. Videos were semi-randomly presented, with no more than two positive or negative videos and no more than two videos with a target of the same gender in a row. Prior to the start of the task perceivers were presented with a test trial in which the test leader checked correct use of the dial. Prior to the start of each video perceivers were asked to put the dial back to “neutral” to start each trial from the same position. All procedures are in line with previous studies using this task (aan het Rot & Hogenelst, 2014). A new addition was that after each video the perceivers were asked to report on how well they were able to empathize with (i.e., state empathic concern) and put themselves in the shoes (i.e., state perspective taking) of the target. Also, perceivers rated how happy, sad, relaxed, and
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