It should also be noted that the test has an extreme cultural bias. High scores result from choosing answers involving direct confrontation for conflict resolution. The high scorer is someone not afraid to display of be confronted with emotion, and for whom emotion doesn't intrude on them personally. It also requires the ability to identify the most likely and common emotional responses of others. Answering the questions required almost zero use of what I experience as empathy. It tested skills that have little relationship to what I *do* in perceiving and understanding the subjective worlds of other people. It is like identifying prime colors: first blue, red, and yellow, and then taking it to the next level to identify orange, purple, and green and then calling that a high aesthetic intelligence. It implies that someone with a relatively easy life who hasn't had to face anything too complex emotionally has the higher EQ.
To describe what empathy is based on my perspective as an inf, I will attempt to explain here. It is not based on obvious answers, but requires hours of observation and communication - easily hundreds of hours of paying attention and listening to someone. It is only at that point that you can establish a baseline for how the person communicates. Their use of language and facial expressions are individualized. What can look like boredom on one person's face is contemplation on someone else's. What is anger on one face is anxiety on another. After you establish this baseline and context, then you look for patterns and interrelationships to form a coherent whole. It is the forming and reforming of countless hypothesis in a fluid interaction with new information. The empathetic person doesn't simply approach each person on the same terms, but waits to choose direct or indirect resolution based on what will most likely be effective. Until you have a good guess as to how your approach will be perceived from the other person's vantage point, you wait. This waiting can appear as timidity or lack of having a grasp and control on the situation, but it is quite the opposite. It is using the proverbial scalpel instead of the sledge-hammer unless the latter is more effective.
It's great for people to be tested on confidence and feel great with positive results, but as an empathetic person, I am also aware of its implications in a larger context, which are not all positive.
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