2.6. Balance Emotional Empathy Scale and Interpersonal Reactivity Index Measures

Empathy was assessed by the Italian version of the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale by Meneghini and colleagues [57] in which participants express their level of agreement/disagreement about 30 items using a seven-point scale (from −3 to +3). In the present study, we used a seven-point scale from 1 to 7 to avoid any bias related to the attribution of negative values. Higher scores represent higher levels of emotional empathy (EXP group, M = 44, 73, SD = 18.58; CTR group, M = 28.89, SD = 14.25).

The Italian version of the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) was used to measure both cognitive and emotional components of empathy and consists of 28-item answered on a 5-point Likert scale [56]. The measure has 4 subscales, each made up of 7 items. The fantasy scale (FS) measures the tendency to transpose oneself into fictional situations; the empathic concern scale (EC) assesses the tendency to experience compassion for unfortunate others; the perspective-taking scale (PT) measures the tendency to adopt the psychological point of view of others; the personal distress scale (PD) taps the tendency to experience discomfort in response to extreme distress in others. The mean values and standard deviations for each scale were, respectively, for the EXP group FS: 15.27 (SD 3.46); EC: 13.73 (SD 1.90); PT 16.36 (SD 2.87); PD: 13.27 (SD 3.16). For the CTR group FS: 13.89 (SD 2.36); EC: 13.44 (SD 2.12); PT 14.78 (SD 3.52); PD: 13.00 (SD 3.24).