<p>Considering the prevalent empathy and conflict relationships present among decision-makers (DMs) from the perspective of social networks, a group consensus-reaching model based on influence–empathetic–conflict network analysis (IECNA) is constructed to study the role of empathy in the resolution of group conflicts. In this paper, we determine the empathetic utility of DMs on the basis of the assumption that empathetic utility evolves from inherent preferences through social interactions, and we measure the degree of group conflict on the basis of the empathetic utility of DMs. Three types of key DMs, namely, high conflict, high influence and high empathy, are identified via IECNA, and a key-DMs-guided consensus-reaching model is proposed. On the basis of the proposed model, we analyze the impact of empathy on group consensus-reaching processes (CRPs) through a simulation study. The results show that the empathetic relationship promotes the resolution of group conflict, and the proposed model can not only effectively improve the efficiency of CRPs but also maintain the preferences of DMs to a greater extent, thereby providing a new idea and method for effectively improving the satisfaction of group decision-making.</p>