title: The Empathy Quotient: a cross-cultural comparison of the Italian version.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Empathy Quotient (EQ) is a self-report questionnaire that was developed to measure the cognitive, affective, and behavioural aspects of empathy. We evaluated its cross-cultural validity in an Italian sample.
  
  
  METHODS
  A sample of 18- to 30-year-old undergraduate students of both sexes (N=256, males=118) were invited to fill in the Italian version of the EQ, as well as other measures of emotional competence and psychological distress. Results. The EQ had an excellent reliability (Cronbach's alpha=.79; test-retest at 1 month: Pearson's r=.85), and was normally distributed. Females scored higher than males, and more males (n=14, 11.9%) than females (n=4, 2.9%) scored lower than 30, the cutoff score that best differentiates autism spectrum conditions from controls. EQ was negatively related to the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) and positively related to the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS). Principal component analysis retrieved the three-factor structure of the EQ. Lower emotional reactivity correlated with higher scores in measures of risk in both the schizophrenia-like (Peters et al. Delusions Inventory) and the bipolar (Hypomanic Personality Scale) spectra.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Italian version of the EQ has good validity, with an acceptable replication of the original three-factor solution, yielding three subscales with high internal and test-retest reliability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy. apreti@tin.it
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Preti
authors.forename: Marcello
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vellante
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baron-Cohen
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zucca
authors.forename: Donatella Rita
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Petretto
authors.forename: Carmelo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Masala
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003071:Cognition; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012494:Sampling Studies; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult