https://embrace-autism.com/empathy-quotient/

Embrace-autism has changed their website around a bit. When I first looked last year, most of the tests had some personal notes from a few of the doctors at the clinic giving their opinions on the tests and sharing their own results. Unfortunately I cannot find those, but I do remember for the Empathy Quotient one in particular some of the doctors had very high scores (indicating they were very empathetic, and according to sone less autistic). It kind of depends on how exactly you define empathy, and when you add in things like the double-empathy problem and alexithymia it means that test can sometimes under-report empathy in autistic people. The site still has a lot of information about it, but I do miss the personal anecdotes.

I scored very highly, which makes sense to me. I am concerned with myself, and also concerned with how I fit into greater systems of people. I am one of the autistic people who is hyper-vigilant about social cues: I am constantly noticing mismatches in body language, tone, word choice, etc in other people. Honestly I find other autistic people usually have very consistent messages across all of these things, just a lower intensity. It is allistic people who tend to give contradictory communication in my own personal experience.

I have high cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy... Well, I am usually pretty good at understanding other people's emotions. I can allow other people's emotions to influence my own when I want. But usually when I am in the presence of others my own emotions are neutral. From a cognitive testing perspective, I have very high working memory and very low processing speed, so for social interactions I try to be neutral and safe and store all the details to replay and process later, when I have less sensory input to deal with.

I really like the word "autistic" because of the social aspect, rather than anything to do with empathy. I do not feel an urge to go out and make friends or be with a lot of people. I do not dress or behave in a manner to fit in with any group. I have had sports as special interests in the past, but I've never been a "jock". I listen to metal music, but i'm not a "metalhead". I enjoy cannabis but i'm not a "stoner". My wife has gotten into satanism and started calling herself "goth" the past few years, gotten more tattoos and dresses more in black with a lot of skulls and chains and stuff. I wear black sometimes, but I only have 1 "goth" outfit that I wear a couple of times a year to go to events with her.

I see a lot of allistic people gather together into groups and "lose themselves". Even some autistic people do this. I went to Anthrocon and saw the way people divide themselves into the animal archetypes. But it's not just a one-way interaction of "I am like this, so I will join with a group of others who are also like this". Rather, the group tends to form its own mannerisms which propagate and spread to the individuals, including new members. It is a two-way interaction between the group and the individual.

My wife's satanic organization has a good amount of autistic people. Some of them get all "gothed" up like she does. But if you go to events and look for the people who look the most like me: few tattoos, few piercings, probably wearing regular blue jeans or sweatpants, wearing solid colored t-shirts or flannels or button-downs with simple patterns.... That handful is 100% autistic. The ability to hold on to oneself and resist (or be immune to) the influence of social pressure on mgseld as an individual. I think that's one of the key traits about myself, and one that may be correlated with autism.