I did some with a psychologist but there was also a paid one online I did a few years back. If the name of the website comes to me I'll edit this post.
I can tell you what it was like. It was one half self reporting, one half ability based questions (with pictures of people, situations, eyes, faces etc.). Vast majority of online EQ tests only give you the self reporting half, even though both are important for actually measuring EQ.
Interesting! I'll have to keep my eyes peeled, it would be cool to know what type of scoring I'd get. To be honest, I think having a "learned" high EQ would be more beneficial than dealing with other people's emotions all the time. Seems much more stable, logical, and useful.
EQ is only part learned, just like IQ. It mostly comes naturally (but not entirely) from genetics . Yet it still doesn't seem the same thing. My ex was on the autism spectrum but she tended to experience other people's emotions as her own (I don't know if that necessarily makes her an empath though). She most certainly didn't score high on EQ tests (in fact they were part of her diagnosis).
Hmm... makes you wonder! It's a very understudied and misunderstood thing—there are SO many unanswered questions about it all. As soon as you start throwing around labels like "psychic" or "clarivoyant" (or Empath lol) people kinda roll their eyes like it's witchcraft or something and don't take it seriously.
That's because those labels are basically saying "I am magic". There is a big difference between making a claim that fits with science and one which does not.
There's nothing magical about being an empath. Indeed it may be the natural state for young babies (younger than 1 year). We begin to simulate the experiences of other people in our minds very soon after birth. It's only at around 1 year of development that a baby begins to separate their own emotional experience from those of others. It's for that reason that emotions appear more contagious for babies of that age, for example if a baby can hear another baby crying somewhere, they are strongly compelled to cry as well, even if they're not experiencing distress themselves.
There are a lot of things science can't explain. All I can say is what I've learned from my personal experiences and education over the years.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say here, but it came across as pretty hurtful to me. It's as if you're saying I have the emotional magnitude and differentiation of an infant. It's not like I see someone crying and can't help but burst into tears. I've felt emotions that aren't my own while I'm sitting at home reading, only to find out that my neighbor was distraught after learning that his brother had been killed. Not sure how else that can be explained?
If you want to take a scientific stance and think that anything not proven by science isn't real, that's fine. However, I don't agree with holding that as the ultimate and solely correct worldview without acknowledging there could be other explanations.
Perhaps it's a different phenomenon that we are thinking of. I have known people who do have what you just described, "see someone crying and can't help but burst into tears" as adults, and I would not say that they have the mental fortitude of an infant. They just have a brain which doesn't work entirely the same as other people's. Developments happen to your brain as you progress through life. For some they happen later and for some, some developments don't happen at all. We can understand these things easier by comparing them to younger humans and animals.
I'm sorry for how I answered though. It was an insensitive response.