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Running Head: AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERPERSONAL REACTIVITY INDEX

An Analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index

Elainna Simpson

Loras College
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AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERPESONAL REACTIVITY INDEX

Abstract

The goal of this study is to analyze the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) which is a refined

personality survey that can determine someone’s ability of expressing empathy. Empathy is the capacity

to imagine, experience, and understand what another person is feeling and is used within social

interactions, friendships, developmental guidelines, and psychotherapy. After considering the research

behind empathy and this scale the hypothesis was determined that males will score lower on the IRI

than females will. After the survey was distributed and data was collected the IRI scores were analyzed

and indicate that the IRI is a good indicator of empathy.

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AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERPESONAL REACTIVITY INDEX

An Analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index

The broad definition of empathy is the capacity to imagine, experience, and understand what

another person is feeling. Empathy is a personality based concept that has confounded and interested

researchers for ages. This idea of empathy has been routinely separated into the two different

components: the cognitive side of empathy and the emotional side of empathy. Most studies and tests

have worked to separate these until the creation of Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), which is

what is utilized within this paper to analyze empathy. Research using this scale is an interesting insight

into not only how personalities can be defined, but it is also highly useful to therapists in understanding

their clients and it can be helpful in understanding where children are developmentally. Empathy

indicates a lot about personality and the IRI is the test that covers every aspect in order to receive the

most accurate score.

Literature Review

Since empathy is not a physical entity that can be measured it has long been discussed how it

should be considered as a concept in order to find a way of measuring it. Debating of ideas has unfolded

into three major constructs as possibilities. The first is the idea that empathy is a personality trait or a

general ability of humans. Alongside this idea is that one person can be more empathetic than another

and this could be due to nature or nurture (Duan and Hill, 1996). Throughout research this appeared to

be the favored idea of empathy and this is largely the idea that the IRI is based upon. Another known

construct is that a person’s level of empathy, from nature or nurture, is inconsequential but that

empathy is highly scenario based (Duan and Hill, 1996). This construct is founded off of the idea that if

given a strong enough situation everyone would be empathetic. Lastly is the multi-phased construct of

empathy where empathy is seen as always a series of phases, starting with the empathetic resonation,

followed by the expressed empathy, and ending with received empathy. This is the idea that through

these steps, which happen naturally, will then incite an empathetic state. This construct is mainly used
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within therapy and shows empathy as a moment by moment experience that a patient has gone

through. This construct evaluates the real complexity of empathy in which sequence matters (Duan and

Hill, 1996). These constructs are all correct in their own domains but show how empathy can be seen

differently and evaluated in different ways.

Although there is debate on how empathy is seen as a construct, it is accepted that there are

two different aspects of empathy: cognitive and affective. The cognitive empathetic aspect of empathy is

the ability to understand in an intellectual way the emotional experiences of others. The affective

empathetic aspect is the emotional way of understanding the emotional experiences of others from

sharing in the emotionality of the experience (Gilet et. al, 2013). Before the IRI there were tests to

evaluate empathy in each specific aspect but not the combination of the two. The Hogan Empathy Scale

was based off of the cognitive side of empathy and the Mehrabian and Epstein Emotional Empathy Scale

was based off of the affective or emotional part of Empathy. In 1980, Davis created the Interpersonal

Reactivity Index which was the first of its kind to combine both the cognitive and affective side of

empathy (Davis, 1983). The survey was even more improved as it included the four subscales which each

have a unique take on the definition and experience of empathy which helps to increase the validity of

the survey compared to the previous scales for empathy.

Through empathy research it has been shown that women have higher scores than men in most

prosocial personality traits, including empathy. The study done by Gilet et. al reiterates this within their

data. They discuss that women often score higher on the fantasy due to a reported finding that women

read more fiction than men. When neuroimaging was done it showed that the difference of genders in

empathy could be seen in anatomy and neurophysiology of mirror-neurons. Yet there seems to be a

very cultural aspect with perceived expectations for gender roles where women are perceived to be
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AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERPESONAL REACTIVITY INDEX

more empathetic (Gilet et. al, 2013). Although there is no direct explanation for the disparity between

genders it is something that has been shown in several research studies.

When Davis created the Interpersonal Reactivity he based it upon subscales due to the

complexity of empathy and how it cannot just be measured in one way. To operationalize empathy he

broke it into four subscales. Perspective-taking (PT) is the subscale that determines someone’s

inclination to adopt to the psychological view of another; fantasy scale (FS) measures how often

someone identifies themselves in an imaginative way to fictitious characters; empathetic concern (EC) is

a way to analyze someone’s feelings of concern for those less-fortunate; and personal distress (PD)

which is a scale that measures someone’s personal anxiety in interpersonal settings. These scales each

specifically identify a way to measure empathy and work together to create a comprehensive empathy

score (Davis, 1983). Based upon the research and the ideas of empathy within the psychology field I

hypothesize that males will score lower on the IRI than females will.

Methods

Participants

The sample included 31 individuals, 20 females and 11 males. The participants ranged from ages

16 to 70 when asked to select an age range but 58.1% of the participants were 16-20 and 29.0% were

21-30. Participants were selected through a convenience sample of mostly family and friends who were

sent a link to a Google Form with the survey.

Materials

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index is a scenario based empathy survey that has seven questions

in each of the four subscales mentioned earlier (PT, FS, EC, and PD). All of these questions are meant to

put a person in the specific situations in order to identify their level of empathy. Each question was
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scored using the same Likert scale of: A (Does not describe me well) to E (Describes me very well). These

were then scored A equal to 0 to E equal to 4 but some questions were asked negatively towards

empathy and then reverse coded making E equal to 0 and A equal to 4. The range of possible answers

for the IRI is 0-112 where a high score is equivalent to showing empathy. The foundational article by

Davis (1983) did not include general norms of scoring as a whole but looked more at comparison of the

subscales. The subscales were based upon the complexity of measuring empathy and include:

perspective-taking (PT), fantasy scale (FS), empathetic concern (EC), and personal distress (PD).

Questions were all similar to this: “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how

things look from their perspective. (PT)”. The IRI’s four subscales all have test-retest reliability ranging

from 0.62 to 0.71 and internal reliability ranging from 0.71 to 0.77 (Davis, 1983).

I then created 3 extra items to the survey before sending it out to my participants creating a

total of 31 items with a new possible range of scores from 0-124. I added a question to the PD, EC, and

PT subscales and created one as a reverse coded question. I made sure that each item was scenario

based and fit within one of the subscales. Each I brought from my own personal experiences focusing on

the sensitivity towards others surrounding them and friendships.

Procedure

In order to receive the data I created a Google Forms sheet that included the questions from the

original IRI and then my three added items. When creating the survey it was considered that participants

may lie about their level of empathy so the survey was labelled personality survey instead so they were

unaware of the specific personality trait that was being measured in order to obtain accurate data. I

then sent the survey out in a convenience sample by posting it on my social media and emailing it to

family members.

Results
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In the sample of 31 participants, the mean score was 73.58 with a standard deviation of 14.89.

Figure 1, displays the mean, median, and mode of the survey data. This mean is on the higher end of the

empathy scale since the scoring is 0-124. In Figure 2, the distribution of the data for the scores is

presented. When looking at the average scores of each gender (refer to Figure 3), males had a mean

score of 68.00 and females had a mean score of 76.65. The error bars on the graphs show no significant

difference at 95%. To analyze the reliability of all of the survey items Cronbach’s alpha was used, 0.87.

In order to analyze the difference of scoring within each subscale I analyzed the mean score for

each, this can be seen in Figure 4. The data shows that the personal distress scale received the lowest

scores in empathy (13.61) and empathetic concern received the highest scores in empathy (22.61).

Discussion

The hypothesis at the start of this survey was that males would receive a lower empathy scale

using the IRI than women. This is not supported by my data, since in Figure 3, the error bars show no

real difference between the empathy scores of males and females in this sample. One aspect I would

change in a future study of empathy would be to have an even number of both genders, as well as

getting a few responses from a minority such as those who do not identify as a gender. These alterations

could be accomplished by having a much larger sample size. Overall my data shows the people scored

on the higher end of the empathy scale which is very interesting and is similar to what I was expecting.

When testing the reliability of the survey with Cronbach’s alpha it was higher than 0.75 concluding that

even with my added items it was still a reliable measure. What was also interesting was that after

analyzing the means of the subscales, there is a clear indication that the participants scored lower within

the personal distresses compared to the empathetic concern which received the highest score. Each

subscale measures an important part of empathy but it can be helpful to research to see in which areas

people scored higher in. Another direction for research using this scale would be to examine the
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neuroanatomy of empathy and how that could play a role in therapy. Another direction that could be

helpful to the topic is how psychologists use empathy as a developmental indicator and how empathy

changes within the average person throughout life and how that is connected or similar to the IRI. The

adaption or addition to the IRI that included an examination on if there is a connection between

socioeconomic status and levels of empathy is another route of research that can add to the general

knowledge of empathy and help to promote it. Overall empathy is a very important part of relationships

and there seems to be a lack of research in the past ten years and it is something that I think should be

relooked within this decade.

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References

Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional

approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126.

http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113

Duan, C., & Hill, C. E. (1996). The current state of empathy research. Journal of Counseling Psychology,

43(3), 261–274. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/0022-0167.43.3.261

Gilet, A.-L., Mella, N., Studer, J., Grühn, D., & Labouvie-Vief, G. (2013). Assessing dispositional empathy

in adults: A French validation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Canadian Journal of

Behavioural Science/Revue Canadienne Des Sciences Du Comportement, 45(1), 42–48.

http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/a0030425
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Statistics

TOTAL
N Valid 31

Missing 0

Mean 73.5806

Median 75.0000

Mode 88.00

Std. Deviation 14.89021

Figure 1: Frequency chart for the total score from the IRI survey.
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Figure 2: Histogram of the total score for the IRI survey.

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Figure 3: Bar Graph that compares the mean scores for both males and females. The error bars show

that there is no significant difference between genders in this sample of the IRI survey.
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Statistics

TOTAL FSTOTAL ECTOTAL PTTOTAL PDTOTAL

N Valid 31 31 31 31 31

Missing 0 0 0 0 0

Mean 73.5806 17.0000 22.6129 20.3548 13.6129

Median 75.0000 19.0000 24.0000 21.0000 15.0000

Mode 88.00 19.00 27.00 21.00 15.00

Std. Deviation 14.89021 5.41603 5.01782 5.43782 4.22435

Minimum 23.00 3.00 8.00 6.00 5.00

Maximum 94.00 27.00 30.00 28.00 22.00

Figure 4: Frequency chart that compares the means of the different subgroups of the IRI.

FS: Fantasy Scale

EC: Empathetic Concern

PT: Perspective-taking
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PD: Personal Distress