Empathy quotient test
Vox Day linked to an empathy quotient test that gives a score on how high or low you rate on the trait of empathy. He scored a 23 which is fairly low. Me, I scored a 47, average for a woman. I suppose mine should be higher, given that I am a psychologist. Perhaps this explains why I always liked doing forensic evaluations--they don't focus on empathy, but rather objectivity (at least, they are supposed to).
You can take the test here and see how you score.
You can take the test here and see how you score.
posted by Helen at 9:02 AM
52 Comments:
hmmm... 43, below average for a woman, and a lot lower than I would have predicted for myself.
I thought I was pretty empathetic.
Guess not.
Stupid test. OK I scored 22
Ken
And I don't have a problem with that ok.
25. Like that should come as a surprise.
As for the scale: if the average man's score (according to the testers) is higher than 30, then they must be attracting male respondents from Manhattan and Berkeley.
Hey, at least the test didn't prove that I'm a libertarian.
45 - I wonder about the validity of the test. How many of those attributes are a true measure of empathy? The attributes concerning my ability to perceive others' feelings, moods, etc wouldn't necessarily indicate empathy. I might have become expert at reading others in order to better manipulate them and take advantage of them.
I scored 62. I didn't think it was going to be that high.
12. Like I care.
67...love you man....
47
47
That said, it's a bogus test.
"I can tune in to how someone else feels rapidly and intuitively."
Self evaluation is rarely accurate.
Which means (to me) those scoring at the extremes are deluded.
By the way, if that offends them, I further give a crap. See?
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LOL 16. (Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20)
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An 11, hum...
and I really don't care what anyone thinks about that :-)
On a "Jung - Myers-Briggs" type of personality test I scored as INTJ. I wonder if there is any correlation.
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
Low twenties... like Todd I'm INTJ, and usually my I and J scores are up aginst the wall. I know I come up short in the empathy department but didn't think I was down there with the Asperger / autistic group.
I found some of my answers to seem to contradict.
I wonder if age has anything to do with that? I am a sucker for dogs, and dogs know it. I cry at movies sometimes -- I can be emotionally hooked and manipulated.
But all too often I find myself, in real situations, with adult humans as opposed to puppies, thinking, "Aw suck it up! With that attitude, no wonder you're having a hard time."
It's not that I can't empathize with someone who's feeling down. Far from it. It's that I've BTDT and I know the way out -- and it's usually not the bleeding-heart way.
And I really don't have time for social situations that drain me, either. Come to me with a REAL problem, and you'll find a real friend with some history of my own that gives me the ability to truly know how you might feel, and to care.
But everyday crap? Sorry, can't be bothered with a lot of it. Once you've been through certain things, you can't help seeing certain "problems" people think they are having as immature and trivial.
So I found some of my answers to correlate more with life's lessons than with my actual ability to empathize. I might have been more "accurate" 20 years ago, when I hadn't been through much.
ROFL, 7
There is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy means you feel sorry for someone and empathy means that you are able to see imagine yourself in someone elses shoes. I may not feel sorry for someone but I might be able to understand how they could have found themselves in specific situations or hold various opinions. As I get older I become more empathetic though less sympathetic if that makes any sense.
The other ones were somewhat interesting, not sure the point in the Mind in the Eye test though (got a 26 on that).
Have a 34 on the Autism Spectrum Quotient and a 46 on the Systematizing Quotient.
I was diagnosed as Dyslexic when I was a kid (back in the late 70s) but there wasn't much attention paid to things like Autism or Aspergers up here then and thankfully no one had even heard of ADHD.
29 myself. The test seems to confuse the ability to understand other people's state of mind and condoning it. I understand my four year old's state of mind when she throws a temper tantrum, but I am not about to comfort her and teach her that it is OK to give in to uncontrolled emotion. The test asked two questions about offending people. Neither of which go to whether I can tell if someone is offended, but whether I agreed with them. I rarely agree with someone getting offended as I see taking offense and broadcasting it as a tool of manipulation.
the test is designed to see if you are able to understand how others are responding internally.
nlp, which i`m trained in, teaches methods to be able to do this reasonably accurately.
part of the reason why i scored highly is because of that training, and partly because i`m psychic....or psychotic....however you spell it.
56 - high for a guy.
Grew up with an uninvolved father and an angry mother. Divining what was going on in my mother's head was a matter of survival.
highlander, in psychological terms that`s refered to as hypervigilant.
me too, except it ws my father you had to watch closely.
makes me good at nlp and tests like that.
There is a difference between empathy and sympathy.
Cham - Excellent point. I'm not all that sympathetic a person.
10
I'm sending this to my sister. She might enjoy it.
38. In some ways I would have thought I'd get higher, but in other ways I'm not surprised. I just don't give a shit about people's self-inflicted problems, which is what most "problems" people have are. Well, I guess I've just proven why I got a bit of a low score, lol. I don't want to listen to people's stupid complaining about stupid shit. :P
The test seems to confuse the ability to understand other people's state of mind and condoning it.
Exactly!
Oh, and I'm an INFJ, so you'd think I'd score a bit higher than that!
I got a 10.... I can't be that socially retarded but I expected under a 30
50--pretty high for a guy, but I actually expected higher.
As others have said, the test seems to weight together the ability to understand others, put yourself in their shoes, and so on, with the desire to reassure them. In some instances, reassuring is important, but in others it is best to get them understand how their behavior is hurting them, and how to change for their own good.
Similarly, the questions about whether you use logic to solve your problems are suspect. Feeling the pain of a loved one is an extra motivation to think logically, not an excuse to shut down critical thinking.
-7
Silly test anyway.
Lol, so if I got a 7 does that mean that I'm sub-autistic?
Too reliant on self-evaluation; does not seem to measure how empathetic a person really is but rather how empathetic they *say* they are on various measures.
Has any work been done to validate this test, or is it simply a collection of questions someone thought up?
12, but I stayed up late last night studying for it.
David, the test is interesting in itself. Is one proud and delighted when they feel they can sense how someone else feels or are they proud and delighted that they don't care how anyone else feels? Some of the commenters here are receiving low scores on this self-test. One can make some assumptions about what they perceive is important to them and their segment of society.
44. I can't believe it. I was trying to be on my best behavior, evidently. I definitely need to improve my "asshole quotient."
Some incredible things have occurred in the middle of my life that may have changed my thought patterns. Sorry, men. I hope I have not shamed us.
since i was very young i could always tell what people were thinking even if they were saying something different.
this caused me substantial distress occasionally as a child because adults are expected to be truthful, right?
for example; i was on the second level of a double decker bus with my mum and i was laughing as a man walked along pretending to be spastic. my mum got upset saying that it wasn`t nice to laugh at those less fortunate than yourself.
i couldn`t convince her that the man was pretending until his friend came along and he stopped walking funny.
i knew he wasn`t quite walking disabled enough to be really spastic, and got his joke,
i was four or five at the time.
there are different types of people in the world. alan watts said that there are prickly people and there are gooey people.
i think this is a good test to make a distinction in that regard.
malcolm gladwell called it "thin-slicing". the ability to know without knowing.
....and i don`t think this ability is special, i just think that we are trained out of the ability...especially men.
consumer society needs people to go to sleeeeeeeep.
Self evaluation is rarely accurate.
Which means (to me) those scoring at the extremes are deluded.
Do you think that people are more likely to evaluate themselves as more empathetic than they are, less so, or just inaccurately with no strong tendency in either direction? I'm not looking to argue with you; I really just want to know what you think.
i don`t think this ability is special, i just think that we are trained out of the ability...especially men.
That would make it rather a rare trait. From my reading (and I'm, admittedly, not an expert), between 25% and 50% of the variability in most personality traits is explained by heredity.
ern, i think that it is a rare trait, and one that is less evident in men.
i was thinking earlier about asperger`s and how it`s been removed from the dsm and re-absorbed into the blurry fog of autism spectrum disorder on the direction of types who would score quite low on the test in discussion here.
as an aside, jung had some interesting things to say about the anima and animus, the female traits in a man and the male traits in a woman, much of which get`s overshadowed by the bias toward freud in psychoanalysis.
certainly the female traits in a man are de-selected in a paternalistic technological society as useless at the same time that male traits in women are being advocated.
A 33. I had thought it would be higher when I finished. Almost all my answers were in the middle two sections.
13. As if I care...
And just for grimns and giggles, I just looked up and took a Jung - Myers-Briggs test. INTJ, like the other low scorers here. High on the T.
INTJ 53. I sense (in my decidedly empathic way) that an unusually high percentage of INTJ post here.
59.....ISFJ here.
Did they have these empathy test 50 to 100 years ago? If so I would like to see how the average score might mimic the marriage rate.
INFP, 59. I posted this several days ago but it was lost and so I have been quietly grieving alone.
Trey
Also an INTJ here.
15, which fits as I am a high-functioning autistic, according to two psychiatrists.
Odd to see so many INTJs here since it is one of the most rare MBTI assessments (only INFJ is less common). I can see why Ns might be more interested in psychology though.
Not sure how accurate the Myers-Briggs actually is, it does seem to be rather consistent though. I've taken it many times over the last 20 years or so and have always been listed as ISTJ.
80/80
According to Jung / Keirsey tests, I am: INTJ, 100% NT, I've even done the test under my real name and not my usual screen name / avetar, even took screenshots as evidence, because I'm super tired of MBTI stigma and their trivialization of human behavior, compare it with the Zodiac/star signs, evidence is barely 70% which is unacceptable and I can not believe people take it seriously
I came away from the test with a score of 31. I exhibit no signs of Aspergers as I can easily pick up on what others are thinking and feeling... it's just to a large extent according to the test questions I don't care. So I'm wondering what kind of person does this test make me?
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