Toronto Empathy Questionnaire
A 16-item self-report measure of cognitive and affective empathy, assessing the capacity to recognize and share the emotional states of others.
At a glance
What it measures
The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire is a 16-item self-report scale that treats empathy as a single, broad dimension — the component of social cognition common across the many narrower conceptions (theory of mind, sympathy, emotional contagion, and so on). Spreng, McKinnon, Mar, and Levine (2009) defined empathy as the capacity to understand and respond adaptively to others' emotions, communicate emotionally, and act prosocially.
Items are rated from 0 (never) to 4 (always); eight of the sixteen are reverse-scored, and the responses are summed to a single empathy total.
Validity evidence
Spreng et al. (2009) reported good internal consistency (α = .87) and retest reliability (r = .81 over roughly two months). The scale correlated positively with established empathy measures — Empathic Concern (r = .71 and .74 across samples), Perspective Taking (r = .35 and .29), and the Empathy Quotient (r = .80) — and negatively with the Autism Quotient (r = −.30), supporting convergent and discriminant validity.
Example item
“When someone else is feeling excited, I tend to get excited too.”
Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.
Scoring & interpretation
Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a population percentile against the cited reference sample, with a reliability-based confidence range where α is published.
Psychometrics & norms
| Scale | M | SD | N | α | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Empathy | 64.35 | 7.50 | 116 | 0.86 | summed raw |
Winarick, D.J. (2024) dissertation sample (N = 116). TEQ-16 sum score (16 items, 1–5; 8 items reversed). Published reliability: Spreng, McKinnon, Mar & Levine (2009), Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(1), 62–71 (α = .86).
Source & citation
Spreng, R.N., McKinnon, M.C., Mar, R.A., & Levine, B. (2009). The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(1), 62–71.
Spreng, R.N., McKinnon, M.C., Mar, R.A., & Levine, B. (2009). The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(1), 62–71.
References
- Spreng, R. N., McKinnon, M. C., Mar, R. A., & Levine, B. (2009). The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(1), 62–71.