The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is a published measurement tool for the multi-dimensional assessment of

empathy Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...

. It was developed by Mark H. Davis, a professor of psychology at

Eckerd College Eckerd College is a private liberal arts college in St. Petersburg, Florida. Founded in 1958, part of the campus is waterfront and beach on Boca Ciega Bay. Because of its location, Eckerd is considered a "beach school" and has its own student ...

.MH Davis. "Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach".
'' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 1983 v.44:1 p.113-126 The paper describing IRI, published in 1983, has been cited over 10,000 times, according to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

. IRI s a self-report comprising 28-items answered on a 5-point

Likert scale A Likert scale ( , commonly mispronounced as ) is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research, such that the term (or more fully the ...

ranging from "Does not describe me well" to "Describes me very well". The four subscales are: * '' Perspective Taking'' – the tendency to spontaneously adopt the

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...

point of view of others. * ''Fantasy'' – taps respondents' tendencies to transpose themselves imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictitious characters in books, movies, and plays. * ''

Empathic Concern Empathic concern refers to other-oriented emotions elicited by, and congruent with the perceived welfare of, someone in need. These other-oriented emotions include feelings of tenderness, sympathy, compassion, soft-heartedness, and the like. Empa ...

'' – assesses "other-oriented" feelings of

sympathy Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. According to David Hume, this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of ano ...

and concern for unfortunate others. * ''

Personal Distress In psychology, personal distress is an aversive, self-focused emotional reaction (e.g., anxiety, worry, discomfort) to the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition. This negative affective state often occurs as a resu ...

'' – measures "self-oriented" feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal settings. Example questions: *11. I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective. *28. Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.

Versatility and Adaptability

A study by De Corte et al. (2007) translated the IRI into

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

. The researchers found that their translation is just as valid and reliable as Davis's original version, albeit in their educated, still Westernized sample. Another study by Péloquin and Lafontaine (2010) adapted the IRI to specifically measure

in couples rather than individuals. This was achieved by rewording some phrases used in the original, for example replacing references to "people" and "somebody" to be "my partner," etc. Several couples were also asked to return after twelve months to be re-evaluated. This new version still adequately measured empathy as well as demonstrated

predictive validity In psychometrics, predictive validity is the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure. For example, the validity of a cognitive test for job performance is the correlation between test scores and, for e ...

in the returning couples, correlating relationship satisfaction and each partner's empathy. Garcia-Barrera, Karr, Trujillo-Orrego, Trujillo-Orrego, and Pineda (2017) translated and modified the IRI into a

Colombian Spanish Colombian Spanish (Spanish language, Spanish: ''español colombiano'') is a grouping of the varieties of Spanish spoken in Colombia. The term is of more geographical than linguistic relevance, since the dialects spoken in the various regions of ...

version.Garcia-Barrera, M. A., Karr, J. E., Trujillo-Orrego, N., Trujillo-Orrego, S., & Pineda, D. A. (2017). Evaluating empathy in Colombian ex-combatants: Examination of the internal structure of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) in Spanish. Psychological Assessment, 29(1), 116-122

/ref> This version was used to measure empathy in Colombian conflict, Colombian militants returning to society after having seen combat. The study encountered more difficulty in obtaining valid and reliable findings than previous studies. They attributed this difficulty largely due to the lack of education of the participants, which resulted in the introspective and abstract items of the IRI being difficult to understand.

References

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External links

"Interpersonal Reactivity Index" on Eckerd College websiteMark H. Davis web page on Eckerd College website
Personality tests Interpersonal relationships