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[–]Oneda 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I got 41. I think tests like this one simply state who you already are (or who you want to appear as, if you pick the "correct" answers depending on what type of person you want to be viewed as).

Empathy, being able to feel what another person feels. No, when I see someone in pain or crying, I do not really feel as strongly as they do. When I see a guy get his balls kicked or attacked, it might make me cringe a little, so that's definitely a sign I can simulate in my head the pain they're probably going through. When I see a video here of a person getting shot to death, I don't feel anything at all, probably because I haven't been shot before.

Does being empathic make one a good person? I don't think so. So what if a person can feel what others feel? What if a person cries if they see a person crying? Just because they can feel the same as others doesn't mean they're good. For example, in the ball attacking/kicking scenario, although I might cringe and probably imagine what my balls would feel like if I was the one attacked, that doesn't mean I don't find it funny. That doesn't mean I won't laugh if I saw somebody in real life get his balls kicked by an angry woman. Or let's take a criminal for example. A lady who scams the elderly out of money. She definitely knows how people getting scammed would feel like, but she simply doesn't care. She'll still scam people despite knowing the kind of pain she'll inflict on others.

Personally, I think empathy is both a weakness and a strength. I say it's a weakness when it's too powerful. I know people in real life who would actually cry just because they saw a sad story in the news. They'd cry and be bothered by it the whole day, unable to do their jobs properly. They'd feel stressed about it. I also think it's a strength, if you are not affected by it that much. For example, in business or anything that requires strategy, if you know how people will react to something, like for example, a business proposal you've come up, then you can plan accordingly and use their emotions to benefit you. If you know they are the types of people you can pressure into saying yes, then you keep pushing your proposal aggressively until they succumb. If you know they're the types of people who are strong and not susceptible to pressure, then you would revise your plan accordingly.

Anyway since this is WPD where we watch random people die in all sorts of horrible manner, I imagine most of us here don't have very high levels of empathy. Most of us are probably people who don't get affected that much emotionally by terrible things. People who are too empathic would probably be scared to even watch a single video or look at a static picture of a dead person. They'll probably think it's a "strong image" and be haunted by it for days to come, when to us it's just an every day thing that immediately leaves our minds the moment we click on another link on the internet.