Self-report measure

Perspective-Taking

Perspective-Taking uses 7 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Perspective-Taking.

You learn how easily you take another person's point of view.

For anyone curious how readily they see situations from another person's point of view.

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Pay $4 before you start. The full report and PDF are included.

Your answers stay private.

It comes from empathy research on the thinking side of understanding others.

Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.

What this test is

Welcome. Perspective-Taking uses 7 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Perspective-Taking.

The measure

The Perspective-Taking was developed by Davis (1983). It has 7 items, each answered on a 5-point (Does Not Describe Me Well … Describes Me Very Well) scale.

Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126. Items hosted at ipip.ori.org.

At a glance

Items

Response scale

5-point (Does Not Describe Me Well … Describes Me Very Well)

Est. time

~1 min

Access

Pay before you start · $4, or $2 to repeat · full report and PDF included

What it measures

Seven statements describe the habit of adopting another person's point of view: trying to look at everybody's side of a disagreement before deciding, trying to understand friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective, and trying to put oneself in someone else's shoes before criticizing them.

Davis (1983) identified perspective-taking as the cognitive component of empathy, distinct from the emotional components of empathic concern and personal distress. In his studies it was associated with better social functioning and less interpersonal conflict. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and parallel Davis's scale.

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe a stronger, more habitual tendency to consider others' viewpoints; lower scores describe a stronger tendency to see things from one's own position. The scale measures a habit, not the accuracy of one's understanding of others.

The scale is used in research on empathy, conflict and relationships, and in communication training. On this site, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) Battery measures all four components, the Empathic Concern scale measures compassion, and the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) treats empathy as a single trait.

Example item

“I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the "other guy's" point of view.”

Does Not Describe Me WellSlightly Describes MeSomewhat Describes MeMostly Describes MeDescribes Me Very Well

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.

References

Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126.
International Personality Item Pool. A Scientific Collaboratory for the Development of Advanced Measures of Personality Traits and Other Individual Differences. https://ipip.ori.org/

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
Section	What it shows
Score	Your scale score, computed with the published scoring key.
Comparisons	How your scores compare with a published comparison group.

The test and full report with a downloadable copy are $4.

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For yourself

Take it yourself and receive a written score report you can download as a PDF. When you are signed in, your results are saved so you can retake it later and follow how your scores change over time.

$4 paid before you start, and $2 for each retake

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