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EMPATHY · INTERPERSONAL REACTIVITY INDEX

Free Empathy Test (Interpersonal Reactivity Index)

Four separate facets of empathy — perspective taking, empathic concern, fantasy, and personal distress — in 28 statements, about 5 minutes. Used with the author's permission, never totalled, and never labelled high or low.

What the empathy test measures

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index treats empathy as four related but separate tendencies: perspective taking, imagining how things look to someone else; empathic concern, warmth for people in trouble; fantasy, entering the feelings of fictional characters; and personal distress, one's own unease in tense situations. Mark Davis developed its 28 items in 1980.

“Empathy” covers several different things: understanding someone's point of view, caring about what happens to them, being moved by a story, and being shaken yourself when things get tense. People can be strong in one and not another, which is why this test keeps them apart.

The four facets

Perspective Taking

Measures the tendency to step outside yourself and see things from other people's point of view in real life.

Empathic Concern

Measures feelings of warmth, compassion and concern for people in trouble.

Fantasy

Measures the tendency to put yourself into the feelings of characters in books, films and daydreams.

Personal Distress

Measures your own anxiety and unease in tense emotional situations and emergencies.

Feeling for someone, or feeling it yourself

Empathic concern is aimed at the other person; personal distress is your own unease. In Davis's 1980 data the two were nearly unrelated (r = .11 for men, .01 for women), and people higher in perspective taking reported slightly less personal distress (r = −.16 and −.29).

No total, no high or low

The instrument's author advises against adding the four facets into a total and publishes no norms or cut-offs. So your result shows each facet's 0–28 score beside the means for men and women in 1,161 University of Texas undergraduates in Davis's 1980 study (579 men, 582 women), as a reference point only. The IRI is used here with the author's permission.

What is free and what the report adds

The facet farthest from the 1980 sample, the methodology, and the sources are free. The advanced report adds the other three facets, how your perspective taking and concern combine, the difference between feeling for someone and feeling distressed yourself, empathy for fictional characters, a 90-day practice, and an AI reflection module.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Empathy test questions, answered

What are the four facets of empathy?

Perspective taking is the tendency to see things from other people's point of view in real life. Empathic concern is feeling warmth and compassion for people in trouble. Fantasy is putting yourself into the feelings of characters in books and films. Personal distress is your own anxiety and unease in tense emotional situations and emergencies. Each is measured by seven statements.

Why is there no overall empathy score?

Because the instrument's author advises against one. The four facets are distinct, and personal distress tends to run against the other three, so a total would hide which facet is doing the work. Two people with the same total could have opposite profiles.

Does the result say whether I have high or low empathy?

No. The author publishes no norms or cut-offs and did not design the IRI to sort people into high or low empathy. Each score is set beside the means for men and women in his 1980 sample of 1,161 American undergraduates, as a reference point only.

Is a high Personal Distress score bad?

It is not a diagnosis. It describes how unsettled you tend to feel in tense situations and emergencies. In Davis's data it was nearly unrelated to empathic concern and slightly lower among people who take others' perspectives more, which is why the report reads it alongside those two.

Does this measure how well I read other people?

No. It asks how you usually react, so it measures tendencies you report, not accuracy at recognising what others feel.

Can I use the IRI myself?

The IRI is free for non-commercial use, such as research and teaching; commercial use needs the author's permission. This site uses it with that permission.

SOURCES

Where this test comes from

  1. [1]
    Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85. ↗

    The development of the instrument, available from the author's page. The source of the subscale means for men and women the result is set beside, the alphas behind every likely range, the retest reliabilities, and the subscale intercorrelations quoted in the report.

  2. [2]
  3. [3]
    Davis, M. H. Interpersonal Reactivity Index: the questionnaire, scoring key, and "Guide for Using the IRI" (Eckerd College) ↗

    The 28 items, answer scale, and scoring key reproduced verbatim; the guidance that the IRI has no norms or cut-offs and should not be totalled; and its terms: free for non-commercial use, otherwise by the author's permission, which this site obtained.