People who exhibit psychopathic traits have significant deficits in their ability to empathize, but these deficits vary widely depending on a person’s specific personality profile. A new study reveals that highly insensitive people have a hard time feeling the emotions of others, while highly antisocial people primarily have a hard time understanding other people’s points of view. The study was recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
To understand these nuances, it is helpful to first analyze the concept of psychopathy. In popular culture, psychopathy is often portrayed as a single extreme condition. In fact, psychology considers psychopathic traits to exist on a spectrum within the general population.
Psychologists typically classify psychopathic traits into two main categories: primary and secondary. The main features reflect the internal and interpersonal aspects of psychopathy. These include a deep-rooted egocentrism that focuses primarily on one’s own needs and a callous indifference to the feelings of others.
Secondary traits relate to outward behavioral problems. This category includes antisocial, which refers to aggressive behavior, impulsivity, and a chronic tendency to break rules. A person may score high on a primary trait but low on a secondary trait, or vice versa, meaning that two individuals with psychopathic tendencies may behave very differently in the real world.
Just as psychopathic traits are multifaceted, empathy is not a single psychological entity. Psychologists categorize empathy into three main components. These different components activate different networks in the human brain and influence behavior in completely different ways.
The first element is emotional empathy. This describes the phenomenon of emotional contagion, where you physically feel the emotions that another person is experiencing. If you begin to feel deep sadness when you see a friend crying over a personal loss, you are experiencing emotional empathy.
The second component is cognitive empathy. This involves taking perspective and understanding intelligently what others are thinking and feeling. If you can accurately guess why your coworker is irritated based on their facial expressions or recent experiences, you’re using cognitive empathy.
The third element is empathic concern. This represents the motivational aspect of empathy, which includes feelings of compassion and a genuine desire to help others. You may feel empathetic concern when you volunteer to support a local charity out of a desire to improve the well-being of disadvantaged families.
Previous research has regularly demonstrated that psychopathic traits are associated with lower overall empathy. Australian National University-based researchers Goodhue and Edwards identified a gap that persisted in the scientific literature. Past research has often lumped different types of empathy together during data analysis or failed to distinguish between primary and secondary psychopathic traits.
Some classic empathy questionnaires measure cognitive and affective empathy, but ignore empathic concerns. Other assessment tools combine emotional empathy and empathic concern into a single score. Goodhue and Edwards designed a project to completely isolate specific psychopathic traits and each specific empathic component, with the hope of mapping the exact connections between these components.
To accomplish this, the authors recruited 300 adult participants for a cross-sectional study. Volunteers completed a supervised online survey consisting of several psychological questionnaires. The average age of the participants was about 20 years old, and there was a mix of university students and working adults.
Participants completed an extended version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale. This tool asks respondents to rate their agreement with statements that reflect selfishness, emotional coldness, and a history of interpersonal conflict. Based on these responses, the researchers calculated individual scores for egocentrism, callousness, and antisociality.
To assess emotional functioning, volunteers completed two different empathy surveys. The Cognitive and Emotional Empathy Questionnaire measured the tendency to understand others intellectually and reflect emotionally. A separate subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index specifically tracked feelings of empathic concern and sympathy.
The researchers used statistical methods to evaluate all these variables simultaneously. This method allowed us to observe that each empathic component uniquely contributes to each psychopathic trait. This allows us to rule out overlapping influences and pinpoint where the lack of empathy occurs.
The results highlight strict differences in how individuals with different psychopathic traits handle social situations. Egocentrism was uniquely and fully associated with decreased empathic concern. Egocentric people showed a lower desire to care for others, but their ability to understand and emotionally reflect on others remained relatively intact.
Insensitivity indicated a much more serious emotional flaw. High insensitivity scores were associated with significantly lower emotional empathy and lower empathic concern. Essentially, highly callous people do not resonate emotionally with those around them and do not feel sympathy or motivation to help others when they are suffering.
Antisociality showed a very different pattern. This secondary psychopathic trait was exclusively associated with reduced cognitive empathy. People who tend to break rules or have aggressive outbursts primarily lack the ability to see others’ point of view.
The researchers also analyzed how much variation in people’s psychopathic traits could be explained by empathy scores alone. The three components of empathy accounted for 58 percent of the variance in callousness. This suggests that a lack of empathy is a core characteristic of a callous personality.
Conversely, empathy scores explain only 8% of the variance in antisociality. According to the authors, this particular finding highlights that antisocial behavior is likely caused by factors unrelated to emotional resonance. Future research could also examine other cognitive problems, such as an inability to concentrate or control attention, to explain why people have antisocial tendencies.
The authors noted several limitations in the study methodology. This study utilized a non-forensic sample comprised of a representative population, rather than incarcerated individuals or diagnosed offenders. Follow-up research is needed to determine whether these precise empathic blind spots emerge in institutionalized populations.
Furthermore, this study relied directly on self-reported data. Participants were trusted to honestly assess their own personality traits and emotional responses. People who exhibit strong psychopathic traits may lack self-awareness or try to present themselves in a favorable light, which can skew research results.
Because the study was cross-sectional, the researchers are unable to establish direction of cause and effect. It remains unclear whether a lack of natural empathy leads to the emergence of psychopathic traits or whether the development of psychopathic behavior gradually suppresses one’s empathy.
Despite these caveats, the results paint a very detailed picture of emotional dysfunction. Some people have a hard time understanding other people’s points of view in their heads, while others feel they have no empathy at all, even though they completely understand their point of view. Interventions designed to reduce harmful behaviors may require tailored approaches that target these very specific emotional blind spots.
The study, “On the Relationship between Psychopathic Traits and Cognitive Empathy, Affective Empathy, and Empathic Concern,” was authored by Stephanie C. Goodhue and Mark Edwards.
