An empathy test where being kind costs you something
Most empathy questionnaires ask how you would feel. This one asks what you would give up.
The assessment presents seven short scenarios in front of you, each with a real cost. Being kind is never free: helping someone means giving up something you would rather keep. That is the whole point — it is the trade-off, not the sentiment, that tells you something.
Three scores, not one
You are graded on three separate things, plus an overall score:
- Empathy — whether you acknowledged the people involved.
- Reasoning — whether you explained your thinking.
- Judgment — whether the decision itself was sound.
Separating them matters. A warm answer that makes a poor call and a cold answer that makes the right one are different failures, and a single number hides both.
Pick the track that fits you
There are three versions of the scenarios: general and student, HR and organisational, and medical and clinical. The dilemmas change to match the setting you actually work in.
See where you sit next to the AI models
The same scenarios are submitted to large language models and graded using the same rubric. Your full report shows your judgment alongside theirs — same questions, same scoring, no special treatment for the machines.
Taking it
About fifteen minutes, free, and no sign-up.
The scoring rubric is implemented in ai_empathy, an open-source Drupal module.
With thanks to Axelerant — taking part in their AI initiative led me to AI in Drupal and to building this assessment.