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🧿 Psychology
How empathetic are you really?
Measure your cognitive and emotional empathy.
Rate each statement 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
1I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation.
2I find it easy to put myself in somebody else's shoes.
3I am good at predicting how someone will feel.
4I get upset when I see someone being treated badly.
5I notice quickly when someone in a group is feeling awkward.
6Friends usually talk to me about their problems.
7I can tell if someone is masking their true emotion.
8I feel sad when other people are going through hardship.
9I can sense the atmosphere of a room when I walk in.
10I find it hard to know what to do in a social situation.
What is empathy and how is it measured?
The Empathy Quotient (EQ) was developed by Simon Baron-Cohen (2003, Cambridge). It measures two components: cognitive empathy (understanding others' feelings) and affective empathy (sharing others' feelings).
Population norms (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004)
- Women average: 47/80 on the full EQ scale
- Men average: 42/80
- People with autism: average 20/80
- The gender gap is one of the most robust findings in psychology
Types of empathy
- Cognitive empathy: Understanding what others feel (items 1,2,3,5,7) — "theory of mind"
- Affective empathy: Feeling what others feel (items 4,6,8,9) — emotional contagion
- Psychopaths have high cognitive empathy but low affective empathy
- Autistic individuals have high affective empathy but low cognitive empathy
Sources: Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright (2004, EQ), Lawrence et al. (2004), Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.