If, like me, you’re a little worried about the state of humanity post-pandemic, then our Empathy Quiz will be of some comfort.  For the last four years we’ve been running the Quiz on our website.  We’ve been asking you how empathetic you believe you are toward your fellow humans.

Perhaps because you are worried, or at least curious, you’ve been filling out the Quiz steadily, with nearly 5,000 respondents to date. And I’m pleased to report that you are a highly empathetic bunch.  Maybe it’s because only good people read my blog.  That would be a happy outcome of blogging since 2007!  Or maybe humans are kinder and more thoughtful in general than we fear.

It’s not a scientific survey in the double-blind way, since it is open to anyway who takes it.  So exactly what sort of self-selection is going on we can’t tell.  All we really know is that you have access to the Internet, and you’re interested in communication.

But with those provisos, let’s dive in and see what we can learn about the empathy quotient of our fellow humans in this sample of sage readers.

You enjoy caring for other people, by a wide majority, and most of you are attuned to others, being clearly able to tell when someone else needs to communicate with you.  You do tend to keep your own problems to yourself, and you feel a little uncertain when in a social situation.  Those latter numbers have increased slightly during the pandemic, echoing the general trend toward isolation and loneliness that many have noted and surveyed in various ways.

Nonetheless, you are still heavily invested in friendships and relationships, and focus on others when in communication with them, rather than yourself.  You are quick to spot when someone else is saying one thing but meaning another, and yet you are not judgmental.

You recognize that other people get upset – triggered, in the current parlance – and you accept that.  You get it – this is a clear sign of empathy.  And you find it relatively easy to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

By a wide margin, you think that good manners are important.  This finding goes against the anecdotal evidence of a loss in good manners post-pandemic.  Over and over again people tell me that other drivers, folks ahead of them in line, and those they interact with in daily exchanges of conversation are less friendly, more awkward, and more likely to be hostile.  Or maybe the loss of good manners has made it seem more important in our eyes.

You are very quick to spot when someone else is feeling uncomfortable, and pretty good at ‘reading’ what other people are thinking and feeling.  You are supremely confident that you can tell whether someone else is interested or bored in what you yourself are saying.  And friends are happy to share their problems with you because they sense that you will understand them.  All of these results point toward a strong empathy quotient amongst those of you taking the test.  We ask variants of these questions to test the wording, and all of the variants come back with high empathy ratings.

For at least readers of this blog, then, empathy is alive and well.  Here in the US, heading into the next election cycle, let’s hope that means that we can keep our civility strong through these soon-to-be trying times. We will most certainly be tested.