Empathy Quotient

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Sometimes its framed as "sympathy vs empathy", sometimes as "affective empathy vs cognitive empathy".

Autistics can have sympathy, or affective empathy in spades (be concerned with others), but they tend to have trouble understanding how others feel.

A sociopath would be the opposite. Would have cognitive empathy (would know how others feel), but lack effective empathy (would not care how others feel), and they would use that cognitive empathy to exploit others and screw them over for the sociopaths own interests.

Do you want to know the reality behind the reasons that people got scores far lower than expected?

Because self assessments are stupid. Sorry, but they really are. You can't answer questions which have no quantifying value, just like the question, "Would you rather go to a museum than see a film?", how am I supposed to know? What film is it, what time is it, who am I going with, should I even care?

You can't judge yourself just like you can't tell yourself that you're a bad person. The only people that know that are those around you, and even then they cannot quantify it either.

So I say screw this test and don't let it tell you who you are, or how you feel. Baron - Cohen is still cool though.

This reminds me of the concerns people have over personality tests. Our self-evaluations aren't always objective.

For example, I used to test INTJ or INFJ on the Myers-Briggs a lot (I've since observed that these are very common results for people who take the test online, even though both of those types are supposed to be very uncommon in the populace!). For awhile in the 2000s, I even self-identified quite strongly as an INFJ on Myers-Briggs forums.

It wasn't until the 2010s when the Niednagels at Brain Types told me I'm one of the NT types instead (ENTP, INTP, or INTJ were the three they looked at) that I had to uncomfortably reconsider self-ascribed IN_J label (the Niednagels are trying, although not always productively and successfully, to establish a neuroscientific and objective basis to type; the only other person doing something similar that I'm aware of with the 16 type system is Dario Nardi). What I did, to avoid bias, was send people who knew me well (but who had no prior awareness of the Myers-Briggs system) the various [unlabeled] descriptions of INFJ, INTJ, INTP, and ENTP types, and ask them to pick which description applied to me best. Well, not a single person picked INFJ, the type I self-identified with the most! Instead, they thought the traits of INTP or ENTP were the closest (most thought INTP was the more precise and applicable of the two).

Yes, and that's my concern over these self assessments. I think sometimes we have either conscious or subconscious bias to drift toward one preference above another. The reality is likely more complex.

The MB test isn't even something I think is all that in line with modern thinking. I believe it's becoming outdated; 16 types for seven billion people is going to go wrong somewhere. Instead, there needs to be a more refined set of results. My guess would be around the 250 types mark, but even that doesn't do it justice.

That's a good point. I won't take this test right now as I'm feeling low energy and EQ stuff especially can be difficult, but probably will do so another time. I did 1 test in the past and got like 5/50 though from your description it pretty much was all about Cognitive empathy, and I think they may not have understood any distinctions between it and Affective empathy. With also a bit on the test about social tendencies which I found questionable as social tendencies aren't the exact same thing as empathy. IMO Extroversion does not necessarily equal Empathy. It may often go hand in hand but there are definitely extroverts who are low in empathy, and introverts who are actually high in empathy.

ASD test score which I did same time as the EQ one was like 42/50 and that's with a good few of the questions being noticeable in that I would have answered differently at a younger age. As a child the score would have been probably 47 or maybe even 50/50.

Niednagel's contention that, using his methodology (which he believes is perfectly empirical and objective), 50% of people are ENTP, really made me shake my head (Myers-Briggs estimates them around 5%). He also says ENTP types are "right brained" and therefore synthetic, not deeply analytic, and thus tried to say I wasn't analytic, even though everyone else who has ever assessed me carefully says I'm deeply analytic to the nth degree

I think the 16 type system was a start in the right direction, but things are going to have to become much more precise and analytic in the future if this is going to have significant practical meaning in people's lives. Rather than attempt to merely extrapolate what is going on in the brain, and make dogmatic assertions about how 16 groups of people allegedly process information, we need actual EEG testing and the like to confirm it, and not rely on one man's mere autocratic assertions of what he believes is going on in people's brains.

<---EQ: 20.

<---IQ: ?

Whew, I'm glad there is the cognitive/emotional empathy conversation going on here. I scored 19, but I would describe myself as hyper empathetic (emotionally). This test is scoring cognitive empathy and I already know I am the most gullible person ever.

People will make all kinds of wild assumption about others based on what they think is the reality. I suppose many suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect and just think they're right when they aren't. They assume they know the answers but aren't the experts they think themselves as. In my opinion, psychology and perhaps even neurology are epistemological fields of study, as in they decide what is fact and what is opinion, rather than just getting straight down to brass tacks like, say, physics or chemistry. What I mean to say is there's no numerical value you can stamp on many psychological concepts, besides maybe in the fields of probability.

What's more is that understanding the nature of being human, and our reactions to whatever stimuli we face be it social or emotional or physical, is sometimes the act of predicting the future; people change, will do things differently each day, will think differently each day. Interactions with others serve to further obfuscate the already tangled mess of human function. That is to say, you can't crack open a brain and know who somebody was from this basis alone.

Consciousness and all aspects akin to it are far more complicated than anything we've ever known, from what I've experienced. We need to understand this to truly get "who" any one person is. Perhaps a different approach is required in this regard.

As for your last comments, we need as much hard science as we can possibly attain. Any actual, physical testing is important. It won't give answers, I can almost guarantee that, but it will be a great stepping stone toward a more precise approach. A combination of this and previous ideas may be a good way to go about it.

Mythos -- great reply, reasonable perspective, makes a lot of sense. I totally agree.