Interpersonal Reactivity Index
Mark Davis’s 28-item questionnaire from 1980. The most widely used multi-dimensional self-report measure of empathy in psychology.
Source: Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85. Refined and widely cited version: Davis 1983, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113.
Why the IRI matters
Before the IRI, most empathy measures treated empathy as a single global trait. Davis’s contribution was to treat empathy as multi-dimensional: cognitive and affective components are distinct, and even within affective empathy, other-oriented concern and self-oriented distress predict different behaviour. The four subscales reflect this:
The four subscales
| Subscale | Type | What it measures | Example item style |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perspective Taking (PT) | Cognitive | Tendency to adopt others’ psychological viewpoints | “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision.” |
| Fantasy (FS) | Cognitive | Tendency to transpose oneself into fictional characters | “I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel.” |
| Empathic Concern (EC) | Affective | Other-oriented feelings of sympathy and concern | “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” |
| Personal Distress (PD) | Affective | Self-oriented feelings of anxiety in tense interpersonal settings | “In emergency situations, I feel apprehensive and ill-at-ease.” |
Why the EC vs PD distinction matters
The IRI’s most influential conceptual contribution is the separation of Empathic Concern (EC) from Personal Distress (PD). Both arise in response to another person’s suffering, but they predict opposite behaviour:
- High EC predicts helping behaviour and other-oriented action.
- High PD predicts escape behaviour and withdrawal from the suffering situation.
This is why “feeling for someone” is too vague a description for what predicts pro-social behaviour. The directionality (toward the other person vs back to yourself) makes the predictive difference. Daniel Batson’s empathy-altruism work builds directly on this distinction. See our empathy vs altruism page.
Scoring and norms
Each of the 28 items is rated on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = Does not describe me well; 4 = Describes me very well), giving a possible 0-28 score per 7-item subscale. Davis’s 1980 norming sample of US undergraduates produced means in the 16-22 range across subscales, with women typically scoring slightly higher on EC and PD than men.
The IRI has been translated and validated in many languages and remains the most cited empathy measure in the research literature, with the 1983 paper accruing tens of thousands of citations.