The Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy: A Comparison Between Paper-and-Pencil Versus Online Formats in Italian Samples

Abstract

The most recent conceptualizations of empathy recognize affective empathy as distinct from cognitive empathy. Consequently, instruments that assess these 2 types of empathy have been developed. Among them, the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE) is a particularly promising, relatively new, self-report measure consisting of 31 items. To examine the cross-cultural adaptability of the QCAE, we investigated the psychometric properties of an Italian version in 2 samples and with 2 different formats of administration. Study 1 (n = 407) used archival data collected via paper and pencil; Study 2 (n = 285) used newly collected data, obtained with an online format. In these studies, in addition to the QCAE, 6 other instruments measuring empathy-related constructs (i.e., interpersonal competence, well-being, personality traits, emotion regulation, alexithymia, and emotion recognition) were administered, too. Data analysis focused on factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity. The findings of both studies provide support for the cross-cultural applicability of the QCAE, and reveal interesting associations between empathy and the other constructs under examination.

Validation and extension of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy in the Chinese setting

“…Based on this finding, we also examined the gender differences on total QCAE scores and found that females showed higher scores than male participants. This is consistent with previous studies measured by the QCAE (Italian version: Di Girolamo et al, 2017;Portuguese version: Queirós et al, 2018;English version: Reniers et al, 2011), as well as measured by the EQ (Auyeung et al, 2012), BES (Geng et al, 2011), and IRI (Wölfer et al, 2012). However, our results further revealed that the observed gender difference occurred only in affective empathy, but not in cognitive empathy.…”

“…In general, the internal consistency of the whole scale and most of the subscales are good. However, Peripheral Responsivity had poor performance, which is consistent with previous studies on validation of the QCAE (Cronbach's α = .62 for the Italian version, Di Girolamo et al, ; Cronbach's α = .42 for the English version, Michaels et al, ). These findings indicated that using the total score of the QCAE or the two main components (Cognitive and Affective Empathy) would be reliable and that researchers should be cautious when using the five subscales.…”

“…The psychometric properties and construct validity of the QCAE have been widely reported in healthy (Myszkowski et al, 2017;Reniers et al, 2011) and clinical populations (Horan et al, 2015;Michaels et al, 2014). The QCAE has also been adapted and validated in French (Myszkowski et al, 2017), Portuguese (Queirós et al, 2018), Italian (Di Girolamo, Giromini, Winters, Serie, & de Ruiter, 2017), and Korean (Lee et al, 2016). Despite differences in their age and ethnicity, the five-factor model remains valid.…”

Positive Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on Mental Health of Female Teachers during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy

“…Empathy was assessed with the Italian translation of the Questionnaire of Affective and Cognitive Empathy (QCAE [ 69 , 70 ]). Using a 4-level Likert scale response format (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree), this 31-item instrument assesses the two main components of empathy, namely affective empathy (AE, a person’s emotional resonance to other people’s experiences; item example—“It worries me when others are worrying and panicky”) and cognitive empathy (CE, the ability to understand how other people feel; item example—“I always try to consider the other fellow’s feelings before I do something”).…”

“…Using a 4-level Likert scale response format (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree), this 31-item instrument assesses the two main components of empathy, namely affective empathy (AE, a person’s emotional resonance to other people’s experiences; item example—“It worries me when others are worrying and panicky”) and cognitive empathy (CE, the ability to understand how other people feel; item example—“I always try to consider the other fellow’s feelings before I do something”). QCAE has acceptable internal consistency for the AE and CE components, and the total score (α ≥ 0.77) [ 70 ].…”