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Empathy comes in 3 "flavours" .
Cognitive empathy is the ability to know how other people feel and what they might be thinking. Also known as perspective taking, it is useful for motivating people or in negotiations. I never knew this was a type of empathy until recently. It requires good non verbal communication skills, which is why autistic people have difficulty with it (See my previous post "Discovery 2 - Let's talk about communication" for more information)
Compassionate empathy is wanting to help other people, or animals, in pain and distress. People who have this trait but can keep an emotional distance to avoid being overcome by it make good nurses, paramedics etc.
Emotional or affective empathy is when you feel another person's emotion. Autistic people can feel this very strongly, sometimes more than an NT person, so the assumption that we have no empathy is not true. This misunderstanding may be caused by our struggle to know how to respond to the distress of others, which could be interpreted as a lack of caring. However Autistic people may get overcome by their distressing emotions and may shut down emotionally in response to to becoming overloaded.
The Voight-Kampff test was in a movie, however there are empathy tests, plus many others, to determine whether a person is Autistic. This can be useful, as it can lead to kind, empathic people helping those who want and need support to deal with life. But testing and diagnosis should not be allowed to lead to doubts over competence or the feeling that one is doing something "wrong". NT people misread Autistic people too. It's just difference.
