Why is my EQ so low?

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Every time I've taken the EQ, I have gotten between 2 and 5. I got a lot of 2s and 3s. That is so low! It's not like I'm unable to talk to people, but apparently I'm almost totally unaware of others' feelings and social rules. To most of the questions on there about social abilities, my reaction was, "Wow, can people actually do that?" Like "rapidly and intuitively tuning into another's feelings" and similar things.

Does anyone else have a score this low?

Which test did you do? I'll give it a go. I'll probably get a '1' for most questions, so don't worry -_-

http://psychology-tools.com/empathy-quotient

Woah, that was low. I was feeling in a low and pissed-off mood, but even so.... :-/

Your Empathy Quotient score was 9 out of a possible 80.

Why does it bother you that you scored low? (Apparently I scored low too, since I can't fathom any reason as to why it would bother someone. )

I got 30 out of 80

I got a 13 on the test which was Higher than I thought I would get.

I would not worry about getting a score so low as anxiety or depression would usually deflate your scores.

My score was 11.

I scored 14.

The way I see it, the questions relate mostly to how you feel, not how you act. So, if you manage to be a decent person despite the way nature created you, that makes you a really, really good person for trying so hard with things that feel innately unnatural to you.

But I was always a glass half full sort of guy (for some unfathomable reason)...

I did strongly disagree with the cutting up worms one, so I'm not a sadistic sociopath. Possibly ¬_¬

Had an issue with some of the questions, but I always do on these type of quizzes. Some are dead easy to answer, others are more, "eh, I dunno" or "it depends on the situation". For example, there were a few questions about other people's observations of your behaviour, such as: People often tell me that I went too far in driving my point home in a discussion.

Nobody I know would be that honest. My dad has always had a tendency to utterly lose his temper and start shouting and getting deeply unpleasant if anyone disagrees with his pet opinions. He mostly does it to my mum, but it's happened in front of family members or family friends many times as well. Nobody says anything to him about it: it's all look the other way and pretend it's not happening.

There is never any distinction made between offline and online behaviours either. I don't behave exactly the same offline as online, because the social dynamics are very different. Amongst a group of loud and 'merry' people I would have to shout to make myself heard, when I'm probably already overloaded and fatigued from all the noise. There are exceptions, but in general I tend to be more withdrawn in real life. I'll occasionally be provoked enough to come out of my shell and be very blunt and to-the-point. Whereas on the internet, I'm pretty much always blunt, tbh.

Also, I socialise so little I sometimes genuinely don't know how I would respond in a particular social situation. In which case, I have to extrapolate or draw from memory, which isn't always reliable.

I do actually remember cutting up worms as a kid, I kinda thought that was normal... but I guess what's not normal is my mom says that I beat up my baby brother multiple times when I was 3, I just would repeatedly hit or kick him and he'd start crying, and then when she asked me why I did it I just laughed. And apparently I was hitting him hard enough to cause bruises. I wonder why I did that, because I definitely would feel horrible about hurting a baby now, and I definitely would not do it on purpose. She says I would do other bad things too, but I'd always laugh/smile or just stay silent if they asked why I did it.

Don't worry, L_Holmes. I got the lowest score I've ever seen on the EQ: 7/80 and I'm female. I'm horrified. I thought females were supposed to have high empathy, even those on the spectrum should have higher than a 7.

(Not saying I thought you were female, just noting that I am and I got an even lower score.)