Brazilian-Portuguese empathy quotient: evidences of its construct validity and reliability.

Empathy is the ability to read other's mind and understand their intentions. This paper examines the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of a short form of the empathy quotient (EQ, 15 items). The EQ-15 was administered to 237 participants from the general population from João Pessoa, Brazil. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the tripartite model with cognitive, emotional and social empathy factors. In line with other studies, gender differences were only observed for the first two factors, with female participants scoring higher on both, which suggests that the social factor might not constitute a truly dimension of empathy. Strong evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was only observed for the cognitive factor. The poor psychometric parameters of the emotional and social factors are argued to reflect the complexity and contrasting ideas of their items. The possibility of elaborating specific items for the emotional and social factors is also discussed.