Empathy Self-Assessment
Explores how you understand and respond to other people’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives.
What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to recognise, understand, and respond to other people's thoughts, feelings, and intentions. It varies naturally between people, different brains are wired for it differently, and it shows up both in noticing emotions and in being affected by them. This self-assessment gives you a snapshot.
What this assessment explores
Empathy isn't one thing – it's a collection of different abilities: understanding what others are thinking and feeling, being moved by their experiences, and being able to connect with them in ways that feel genuine. This assessment explores how those different aspects of empathy show up for you. It's built on the EQ-40, a widely used measure in both clinical and research settings.
See the original scaleWhat you can expect
There are 40 questions, and they'll ask you to reflect on how you tend to experience and respond to other people's emotions and perspectives.
The questions touch on things like:
- Cognitive empathy – your ability to understand what others are thinking and feeling
- Emotional empathy – how attuned you are to others' emotional experiences
- Social skills – how naturally you're able to connect and interact with others
Your responses give you a clearer picture of where your empathy strengths lie – and where things might feel more effortful.
Dr David Hegarty
Head of Psychometrics | Psychologist
Why this is free and private
Insightable Mind is built by clinical and research psychologists to help people better understand themselves, while contributing to meaningful psychological research. These assessments are offered free as part of that work. Your responses are private – when data is used for research, it's fully anonymised and combined with others to help improve the assessments and answer important questions about human psychology.
Top tips
Our best advice to help you get the most out of your self-assessment:
