QCAE: Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy
Reniers et al.’s 31-item measure. Designed to cleanly separate cognitive empathy from affective empathy with a confirmed two-factor structure.
Source: Reniers, R. L., Corcoran, R., Drake, R., Shryane, N. M., & Vollm, B. A. (2011). The QCAE: A questionnaire of cognitive and affective empathy. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93(1), 84-95. doi:10.1080/00223891.2010.528484.
Why a third instrument?
By the time the QCAE was published in 2011, the IRI and EQ had both been in wide use for decades. Reniers and colleagues argued there was still a gap: neither earlier instrument cleanly delivered two stable factors corresponding to the cognitive-affective distinction that had become central in empathy research.
The QCAE was constructed by drawing items from existing measures (IRI, EQ, Hogan’s Empathy Scale, and others) and selecting those that loaded cleanly on either a cognitive or an affective factor in confirmatory analyses. The resulting 31-item instrument has five subscales nested under two higher-order factors.
The QCAE structure
| Factor | Subscale | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| Cognitive Empathy | Perspective Taking | Adopting another’s viewpoint |
| Online Simulation | Actively imagining how another might feel | |
| Affective Empathy | Emotion Contagion | Automatic catching of others’ feelings |
| Peripheral Responsivity | Affective response to portrayed emotion (film, fiction) | |
| Proximal Responsivity | Affective response to emotional people one is with |
When to prefer the QCAE
The QCAE is the natural choice when your research or clinical question specifically requires separation of cognitive and affective empathy. Examples include:
- Studies of dark triad personality, where the pattern of interest is high cognitive empathy combined with low affective empathy.
- Studies of autism, where the pattern of interest is often differences on cognitive empathy with preserved or elevated affective empathy.
- Compassion training studies, where the question is whether intervention shifts affective empathy independently of cognitive empathy.
For studies that want a brief screening measure, the EQ remains more common. For studies that want the Empathic Concern vs Personal Distress distinction, the IRI is the established choice. The three instruments are complementary rather than competing.