Empathy with Fictional Stories: Reconsideration of the Fantasy Scale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index
Abstract
The present research compared empathy for real people with empathy for fictional characters. 95 university students (53 men, 42 women) ages 18-22 years (M = 19.5, SD = 1.9) completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Fictional IRI. The IRI is a widely used measure of human empathy, and the Fictional IRI contains items from the original IRI that have been modified to investigate empathy for fictional characters. Empathy for characters in fictional stories was found to correlate statistically significantly with empathy for real people on all but a few factors. The results of the present study indicate that empathy for real people and empathy for fictional characters are similar, suggesting that the Fantasy subscale of the IRI, which is limited to fictional stories, should be reconsidered.
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Empathy for characters and real-life people are similar.
“Indeed, research conducted by Nomura and Akai (2012) with university students indicates that empathy for characters and real-life people are similar.”
From Reading and Empathy: Qualitative insights into adolescents' experiences with fiction books (2025) · cites this paper as Nomura and Akai, 2012
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“Indeed, research conducted by Nomura and Akai (2012) with university students indicates that empathy for characters and real-life people are similar.”
Kawaguchi, Y., Kurata, S., Kawata, N. Y. S., Yao, A., Nishitani, S., Fujisawa, T. X., & Tomoda, A. (2025) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-025-92804-0 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Nomura, K., & Akai, S.
- Affiliations
- The University of Osaka (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Nomura, Kohei
- Venue
- Psychological Reports
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-02
- Volume
- 110
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 304-314
- ISSN
- 0033-2941 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-691X
- OpenAlex
- W2066076701
- Cited by
- 57
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 39.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Reports (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Media Influence and Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Narrative Theory and Analysis
- Keywords
- empathy, fictional characters, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, scale validity
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Empathy, Fantasy, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires, Students, Young Adult
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