Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Empathy? What the hell is that?

Just as an addendum to my Asperger's post a couple of days ago...

I recently saw a link to an Empathy Quotient test at Massimo Pigliucci's Rationally Speaking blog.  Go take the test, it's only 60 questions.

Holy shit, I can't believe how low I scored.  My wife scored 45, which is close to average for women (47).  Most men score around 42.  Most people with Asperger's Syndrome score around 20.  I took 'the test twice, the first time by myself and the second time a few days later with my wife of 18+ years looking over my shoulder and "correcting" my answers.

My two scores were 16 and 13 respectively.  That's really depressing and now my wife mocks me about my supposed "lack of empathy."  No wonder I decided to study rocks in college.

Posted by Steven Schimmrich at 12:29 AM

5 comments:

  1. WoldkillJune 29, 2011 at 7:07 AM

    Hmmm. I scored 26. What does it mean if I can not figure out how I got that score? I always think of myself as empathetic but maybe I am just emotional lol The previous test I could have predicted the outcome, but this one made me pause for a moment.

    Thank you for posting these.

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  2. curious cuberJune 29, 2011 at 9:18 AM

    You are a teacher though. I teach high school math and scored a 52. Not quite sure what that means or what I am getting at. Just an observation.

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  3. Steven SchimmrichJune 29, 2011 at 9:53 AM

    I'm not sure why I score that low since I don't think I have that little empathy really. Especially given that psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen calls evil the absence of empathy (see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14scibks.html?_r=1). I'm certainly not evil!

    ReplyDelete
  4. curious cuberJune 30, 2011 at 9:17 AM

    All geologists are evil!

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJuly 3, 2011 at 8:42 PM

    I scored 27, borderline again, as I was for the Asp/Autism test.

    ReplyDelete

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