Testing the Psychometric Properties of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) in Chile

Abstract

The psychometric properties of Davis’ (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) in Chile were assessed. The IRI was applied to a sample of 435 college students. Appropriate internal consistencies and test-retest stability resulted. The instrument’s validity was evidenced by the interrelations among the scales, in addition to its correlations in the predicted direction to other related psychological constructs, and sex differences emerged in three of its dimensions. A confirmatory factor analysis corroborated the theoretical structure of the IRI in Chile, and the suitability of both the four-factor model and a second order factor that integrates three of the dimensions . The implications and comparison of the results with other adaptations of the IRI are discussed.

Aggressive and Prosocial? Examining Latent Profiles of Behavior, Social Status, Machiavellianism, and Empathy

“…First, we used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis 1980Davis , 1983 to assess perspective taking and empathic concern, and despite these subscales' validated psychometric properties, in the current sample they had relatively low internal consistencies. This is surprising, given that Fernandez et al (2011) used confirmatory factor analysis to assess the psychometric properties of the IRI in a Chilean college student population and corroborated its theoretical structure, reporting an internal consistency of .73 for the perspective taking and empathic concern subscales. Although no study to our knowledge has systematically validated the IRI with Chilean adolescents, we decided to run confirmatory analyses and keep a conservative approach by selecting the items that showed higher loadings and allowed a better internal consistency for the subscales used.…”

The role of empathy in the neural responses to observed human social touch

“…The same trend was also found in the Swedish version of the IRI, in which a general empathy factor underlies three of the IRI scales with the exception of PD (Cliffordson, 2002). In contrast to the German and Swedish versions, in the Chilean, Dutch, and Spanish versions of the IRI, the fantasy scale (FS) and not the PD was the only subscale that did not relate to the remaining three scales (De Corte et al, 2007;Escrivá, Navarro, & García, 2004;Fernández, Dufey, & Kramp, 2011). Furthermore, in the Chinese version of the IRI, a three-factor model was found with the FS and PD as different stand-alone factors, and the empathic concern and perspective-taking scales combined as the third factor (Siu, 2005).…”

Diseño y Validación de la Escala de Creencias Normativas Sobre la Prosocialidad en Adolescentes Chilenos

“…Se empleó el Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983). Esta escala ha sido validada para población chilena (Fernández, Dufey & Kramp, 2011). Consta de 28 ítems (tipo Likert de 5 opciones) con cuatro sub-escalas que evalúan: (a) Identificación con personajes ficticios, (b) Toma de perspectiva, (c) Preocupación empática y (d) Malestar o ansiedad producida por el reconocimiento de la experiencia negativa de otro.…”