The Psychometric Assessment of Empathy: Development and Validation of the Perth Empathy Scale

Abstract

Empathy, the ability to infer and share others’ affective states, plays a vital role in social interactions. However, no existing scale comprehensively assesses empathy’s cognitive and affective components across positive and negative emotional valence domains. This article explores the latent structure of the empathy construct and attempts to remedy past measurement limitations by developing and validating a new 20-item self-report measure, the Perth Empathy Scale (PES). In Study 1 ( N = 316), factor analyses revealed a coherent empathy construct comprised of cognitive and valence-specific affective components. Study 2 ( N = 331) replicated this factor structure, showed measurement invariance between males and females, and highlighted the importance of assessing negative and positive emotions in empathy. The PES showed convergent and discriminant validity from comparisons with alexithymia and other empathy measures. Overall, this article empirically establishes a conceptually clear structure of the multidimensional empathy construct, which the PES reliably and validly measures.

Toward feeling, understanding, and caring: The development of empathy in young autistic children

“…For example, it was reported that while the tendency to empathize with others’ negative emotions was related to more personal distress and higher negative emotionality, the tendency to empathize with others’ positive emotions is related to higher positive emotionality and greater willingness and readiness for prosocial actions ( Andreychik & Migliaccio, 2015 ; Murphy et al, 2018 ). Furthermore, although as discussed before, downregulating one’s own emotional distress is essential for facilitating empathic reactions to someone who experiences negative emotions, upregulating one’s own emotional arousals is often needed when empathizing with others’ joy and excitement ( Brett et al, 2022 ). Future research in empathy should avoid this biased focus and broaden our understanding of empathy for both positive and negative emotions in typical and atypical development.…”

Development and initial validation of the Multidimensional Empathy Scale for Adolescents

“…The limitations of existing empathy scales show that a more multidimensional measure for adolescents is needed. In particular, the current literature views empathy as comprising cognitive and AE and shows that empathizing may be separable from positive and negative emotions (Brett et al, 2022). Additionally, the specific ways in which empathy is expressed and valued may differ between individualistic and collectivistic cultures in terms of empathizing with the majority or the minority in a group setting.…”

Cross‐cultural adaptation and clinical application of the Perth Empathy Scale

“…In the study by Brett et al (2022), the original PES was found to have good reliability and validity. Results from factor analyses discovered a three‐factor structure of the PES, whereby there was a unitary Cognitive Empathy factor, along with the valence‐specific Negative Affective Empathy and Positive Affective Empathy factors (see Supporting Information: Figure ).…”

“…To address this need, Brett et al (2022) recently developed a novel 20‐item scale, namely the PES, to assess cognitive and affective empathy across both negative and positive valences (Brett et al, 2022). Four subscales were designed to measure the various subcomponents of empathy for either negative or positive emotions: Negative Cognitive Empathy (e.g., Just by seeing or hearing someone, I know if they are feeling angry ), Positive Cognitive Empathy (e.g., Just by seeing or hearing someone, I know if they are feeling amused ), Negative Affective Empathy (e.g., When I see or hear someone who is angry, it makes me feel angry too ), and Positive Affective Empathy (e.g., When I see or hear someone who is amused, it makes me feel amused too ).…”