Empathy, or lackthereof, is a cultural product. It is a learned cognitive skill that is reinforced by the actions and events we experience. Since 2000, the U.S. has experienced two recessions, saw the worst tragedy in American history, carried out two wars, scaled back civil liberties at home, and those are just some of the macro changes. There are also a few less obvious changes in American society.

Author Jonathon Franzen suggests that the rise in consumer technology has also contributed to a certain narcissism.

…the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self…Consumer technology products…[are] great allies and enablers of narcissism…Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.

Further reading: Why Is Empathy Decreasing?

If the average student in 1979 scored at the 50th percentile of the distribution of…PT, the average student in 2009 scored at…the 33rd percentile of PT (assuming a normal curve).

This represents a 34% decrease in PT.

If the average student in 1979 scored at the 50th percentile of the distribution of EC…the average student in 2009 scored at the 26th percentile of EC

This represents a 48% decrease in EC.

Full Results

If you look at the questions for EC and PT, as well as what they are meant to measure, these closely resemble what most people would consider empathy, i.e. the psychological processes that produce feelings which are more congruent to another individual’s situation than our own.

On the other hand, the Fantasy subscale could be affected by cognitive tendencies that aren’t directly related to empathy. For example, maybe someone who is otherwise very empathetic doesn’t get emotionally involved with fictional characters simply because they aren’t real. Likewise, PD is strongly dependent on controlling one’s own emotions, which doesn’t necessarily say anything about their empathy.

This signifies the number of students who have completed at least one of the scales within the index, i.e. EC, PT, FS, or PD scales.

In other words, almost 14,000 college kids have taken the test over the past 40 years.

The personal distress (PD) scale taps the tendency to experience distress and discomfort in response to extreme distress in others.

Example:

Being in a tense emotional situation scares me.

The fantasy (FS) scale measures the tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional situations.

Example:

When I am reading an interesting story or novel, I imagine how I would feel if the events in the story were happening to me.

Click here to take the test!

Fairly straight forward test with 28 questions that encapsulates the EC, PT, FS, and PD scales. It asks you to read certain statements regarding empathizing with others, and to rate how well those statements describe yourself on a scale from 1-4.

Sample questions:

• I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel.
• If I’m sure I’m right about something, I don’t waste much time listening to other people’s arguments.
• When I see people being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them.

The perspective taking (PT) scale measures the reported tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others in everyday life.

Example:

I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective