Sympathy

Feeling with someone is separable from acting for them — and the two often come apart.

High scorers are moved by suffering. Low scorers register it without being pulled by it.

Low Sympathy alongside high Dutifulness is a specific and common profile: consistent care driven by obligation and principle rather than by vicarious feeling.

Four public-domain statements, answered on a five-point scale. Items marked − are reverse keyed: agreeing with them counts against the trait, which is what stops agreeing with everything from producing a high score.

• +Sympathize with the homeless
• +Feel sympathy for those who are worse off than myself
• -Am not interested in other people's problems
• -Try not to think about the needy

Four items is not many. A facet measured this way carries real uncertainty, which is why every score on this site is reported as a range rather than a single number.

This is one of the traits asked four times over — once for each level of closeness, from your inner circle out to strangers. Our prediction for it: steep.

Vicarious feeling, which plausibly requires a relationship to activate at all.

• +I feel it in myself when ⟨group⟩ are hurting.
• +I am moved by the troubles of ⟨group⟩.
• -I stay unaffected when ⟨group⟩ are upset.

⟨group⟩ is replaced by each of the four closeness anchors in turn.