New research published in cognition and emotion This provides evidence that people with psychopathic traits may have trouble sharing the emotions of others, even if they are able to accurately recognize them. This study suggests that empathy works differently in real-life social interactions than in individual clinical trials. These findings provide new insights into how relationships work and how certain personality traits can impede social bonds.
Scientists often study empathy by asking people to fill out questionnaires or look at still images in the lab. However, this approach essentially removes the social element from the concept of interacting with other humans. A growing movement in psychology suggests a move toward more interactive methods to observe how empathy unfolds in real time.
This dialogical shift is particularly needed in the study of psychopathy. Psychopathy is a set of personality traits that includes manipulativeness, impulsivity, risk-taking, and a reduced capacity for guilt. The main feature of this condition is a lack of empathy for others.
Previous research on psychopathic traits has mostly relied on artificial laboratory settings. The authors of the new study wanted to know whether the lack of empathy associated with psychopathy looks different in real-life conversations.
“Research on empathy in psychopathy has relied almost exclusively on surveys and tasks in which people respond to emotional photos and videos. And while these methods capture some aspects of empathy, they do not reflect how empathy works in everyday life,” said study author Matthias Burgert, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Crime, Security and Law.
“Outside the lab, empathy typically develops through interactions with other people. Therefore, we wanted to study empathy in a more natural setting by observing real social interactions between two people. As an added benefit, this approach also allowed us to examine physiological synchrony in psychopathy for the first time.”
For the study, researchers recruited 82 people from the New Zealand community. These participants were divided into 41 interacting pairs. About half of the pairs were made up of people who already knew each other, such as friends or lovers.
The other half of the pairs were strangers who met for the first time in the lab. The scientists assessed each participant’s psychopathic traits using standard personality surveys. The survey measures specific traits such as fearlessness, self-centered impulsivity, and ruthlessness.
Self-centered impulsivity involves reckless behavior and lack of self-control. Ruthlessness refers to deep emotional indifference and general indifference towards others. After completing the study, participants wore a special vest that recorded their physical reactions.
These sensors tracked heart rate and electrodermal activity throughout the experiment. Electrodermal activity measures subtle changes in sweat gland activity on the skin, indicating physical arousal and emotional responses. By measuring these body changes, scientists can study physiological synchrony.
Physiological synchronization occurs when the physical responses of two interacting people naturally match. When two people share a deep conversation, their bodies can begin to react in the same way at the exact same time. Scientists wanted to see if people with higher psychopathic traits showed less of this physical integrity.
During the experiment, each pair had four six-minute conversations about major life events. They took turns sharing personal stories about positive moments, negative events, and big regrets. The researchers recorded video and physical data, and the participants simply had spontaneous conversations.
After the conversation, each person sat down at their computer and watched the video again. They used a computer mouse to continuously rate the intensity of their emotions during the conversation. They then watched the video again and rated how intense they thought their partner’s emotions were.
This has allowed scientists to measure two different types of empathy. The first type is empathic accuracy, which is the ability to accurately infer what another person is feeling. The researchers measured empathic accuracy by comparing a person’s guess to their partner’s actual self-assessment.
The second type of empathy is the sharing of emotions and involves actually feeling the same emotions as the other person. To measure this, scientists compared the self-reported emotional intensity of both people in the pair. High emotional sharing means that both people felt strong emotions at the exact same moment.
The results showed that people who knew each other had higher empathic accuracy. Friends and partners can more accurately estimate the strength of each other’s feelings than strangers. However, they showed great ability to accurately read each other, even strangers.
When examining the characteristics of psychopaths, scientists found no association between psychopathy and empathic accuracy. People with more advanced psychopathic traits were able to identify the emotional states of others as well. They did not seem to lack the mental capacity to recognize emotions.
However, psychopathic traits affect emotional and physical connections. Researchers found that egocentric impulsivity was associated with lower levels of emotional sharing. People with this impulsive trait are less likely to actually feel the emotions that their conversation partner is experiencing.
Physical data provided evidence of a similar pattern. Heart rates were not synchronized between participants, but skin responses matched in many pairs. The scientists noted that ruthlessness tends to be associated with decreased physiological synchrony.
Those who scored high on coldness were less likely to physically mirror their partner’s physical arousal. This suggests a physical separation that coincides with a spiritual separation. The topic of conversation did not seem to change these results.
“Empathy problems in psychopaths may be more widespread than previously thought,” Burgert told SciPost. “We found that physiological synchrony, an automatic process that occurs between people during interactions, may also be reduced. This may help explain why people with psychopathic traits suffer from emotional empathy and may open exciting new directions for future research.”
These results have several limitations and should be interpreted with caution. This study used a relatively small sample size, which means that statistical power is low. This lack of power suggests that the results are preliminary and need to be replicated in larger studies.
Another limitation involves the natural conversation design itself. Because participants were allowed to speak freely, the dynamics of the conversation varied widely between pairs. Some people dominated the discussion, while others shared their speaking time equally. Future research may be able to measure these conversational styles and incorporate them into data analysis.
The study, “Empathy, Physiological Synchrony, and Psychopathology: Preliminary Insights from a Naturalistic Dyadic Relationship,” was authored by Matthias Burghart, Roydon Goldsack, Areito Echevarria, and Hedwig Eyesenbarth.
