Why is my EQ so low?

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For a start, I'm wondering what your mother expected a 3-year-old to say: "well mother dearest, I took strong exception to the presence of this unwanted intruder in my life, who does nothing but cry and poop himself all day and takes up the majority of your time and attention".

Think AspieUtah summed it up pretty well. Siblings can behave fairly horrifically to one another; there is no love lost between them. As a 3-year-old I don't think you can be expected to take any responsibility for your behaviour; your mother simply should not have left you alone with your baby brother, end of. She also probably could have helped you a lot more; but to be fair if you were undiagnosed at the time, then she probably wouldn't have had a clue how to.

Edit: New forum, new bugs...

19 Just about all my "empathetic" answers are from post diagnosis awareness or coping mechanisms

Why would you care what anybody else though of your scores?

This test has a lot of questions relating to "mind reading capabilities", and I am simply too honest to pretend that I can "read minds" reliably.

What you have to bear in mind is that the answers to such questions do not provide an indication of how good someone is at "reading" people's minds. Note that I am using quotes because no one can reliably read minds. It seems however that many neurotypicals have a fairly strong belief that they can "read" minds, and as a consequence their answers differ from mine and presumably from yours.

Additionally neurotypicals don't seem to worry too much if they make mistakes in mind reading. Concrete example: how often have neurotypicals been able to accurately read your mind? Did they even notice any potential misinterpretations of your state of mind?

Tests such as the EQ test may be a rough tool for distinguishing people with a typical cognitive lens from people with an autistic cognitive lens, but from my perspective such tests actually say very little about empathic capability.

Think about it, anyone who does not suffer from an over-inflated ego will score poorly on mind reading questions.

On this test I scored 17 because my answers to questions related to affective empathy clock up a few points.

The notion of cognitive empathy is somewhat suspect. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that cognitive empathy is strongly tied to the belief in a social hierarchy and related norms. If you say or do something that is incompatible with the established social order, then you are perceived as lacking cognitive empathy. In reality you may simply not believe in the relevance of social hierarchy, and hence may not be concerned about openly speaking your mind in the presence of so-called social authority.

If people are offended and tell you that you should pay them more respect, it is a clear indication of their belief in social hierarchy. The problem is purely ideological. Talk to a neurotypical anarchist and respect will not be an issue.

You can artificially improve your mind reading scores by imagining how someone for whom social status is extremely important would answer the questions. The majority of neurotypicals cannot fathom that there are others who simply do not care at all about social status.

Don't be concerned about your test results

I got a 22. I think I have that score because I'm a socially isolated nerd. Since I don't socialize that much, I kind of feel clueless in a lot of social situations. I'm also quite spacey so that can make me miss some social cues. If I'm not spaced out I don't usually miss social cues. I just don't know how to respond to them.

I just got 12\80, which is better than the last time i took it. About a year ago, I got 8\80.

The questions are often too vague, and it's hard to tell the answers, particularly if you fill them out alone.

E g. "I can sense if I am intruding, even if the other person doesn't tell me." Let's say, once in a blue moon I sense I'm intruding. How am I supposed to know if these are all cases when I'm intruding, or there are actually 20 times more cases when I'm intruding, and don't sense it? (If we are talking about cases when the other person doesn't tell.) There are countless questions like this.

Socially better people probably assume the better answer, while less social people assume the worse, slanting the result to the extremes in each case.

I scored 15 this time. But I have scored as high as 21 - I guess I must have been in an exceptionally good mood then - But considering under 30 is recognized as ASD territory - it is still pretty damn low.

AS it has been explained in the writing of Simon Baron-Cohen and many others that this lack of empathy does not mean one doesn't have a heart. It means that one tends not to spontaneously and intuitively and naturally understand other peoples' feelings and thoughts. Even if many of us are not good at that - it does not mean that people on the Spectrum cannot love and care about others just as much as anyone else.

Simon Baron Cohen from Cambridge writes that both people with autism and psychopaths/sociopaths have an empathy deficit - BUT it is VERY different. A person with autism simply does not understand other peoples thoughts and feelings very well - But when they do become aware they care just as much as anyone else. A sociopath/psychopath is kind of the opposite. They tend to be very good at clueing in to how others think and feel so they can manipulate them - With them they may very well know quite well when someone else is hurting really bad. They just don't care or they might even enjoy that.

Yes, the perspective of a sociopath seems to be quite different, the one I knew was a ‘winner’, in a basic survival context.
Anyway, I scored 20.

You got 1? Are you sure that's possible? Maybe a site error.
I got 20 again, I always take this result. Idk if it's "good" or not.

I got a 23/80 on the EQ. No wonder i'm not only aspie but introverted as well.

I got 20/80. An improvement since the last time I took that test.

Nope, fMRI studies show that empathy is about equal between the genders. It also showed that most people fake empathy a lot. And that people don't empathize much with people from different cultures or people who are simply different.
The idea that women are more empathetic is a cultural dispensation that hasn't been proven with science.

I have got 9/80 on the occasions I have done this.