snappleeducated:

nbkangel:

exousia-skotos:

link??

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

yeah, this… this is not a great test. and not just because online psych tests generally aren’t reliable, but because it doesn’t even bother to distinguish between the different types of empathy it’s measuring for the test-taker. that’s probably the source of all the confusion people are having over their “results” – the test is (trying to) measure both emotional and cognitive empathy, and then presenting the combined result as an “empathy score”.

generally speaking, empathy can be divided into two categories:

emotional empathy, which is what people generally think of when they think of empathy – the ability to empathize with others, to “feel their pain”. basically, having an appropriate emotional response to someone else’s emotions.

cognitive empathy is the other portion of empathy, and it has less to do with inciting an emotional response in yourself, and more to do with the ability to recognize and identify emotions in others. it’s essentially reading people and understanding what they’re feeling.

that’s a very simplified, basic explanation, but the point is that these two branches of empathy are very different – they’re even handled in separate, distinct regions of the brain – and this test is treating them like they’re both one thing. and they’re really, really not.

the people saying that low empathy is a sign of psychopathy and narcissism?? yeah, that’s low emotional empathy. someone high in cognitive empathy but low in emotional empathy would be able to read people very well, but wouldn’t feel the appropriate emotional response to others’ emotions.

similarly, a person on the spectrum who has difficulty reading facial expressions and body language might have low cognitive empathy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have low emotional empathy.

(also, even if the above wasn’t true, this test is by baron-cohen, and i’m not going to say flat-out that everything he creates is total bunk, but… take it with an entire truckload of salt)