Psychopathic traits are linked to a lack of physical and emotional connection during face-to-face interactions

A new study published in Cognition and Emotion provides evidence that people with psychopathic traits might struggle to share the emotions of others, even when they can accurately identify those feelings. The research suggests that empathy operates differently in real social interactions than in isolated clinical tests. These findings offer fresh insights into how human connection works and how certain personality traits interfere with social bonding.

Scientists have often studied empathy by asking people to fill out questionnaires or look at static images in a laboratory. But this approach removes the social element from a concept that is fundamentally about interacting with other human beings. A growing movement in psychology suggests shifting to a more interactive method to see how empathy unfolds in real time.

This interactive shift is especially needed in the study of psychopathy. Psychopathy is a set of personality traits that includes manipulation, impulsivity, taking risks, and a reduced capacity for guilt. A central feature of this condition is a lack of empathy for others.

Previous studies on psychopathic traits have mostly relied on artificial laboratory setups. The authors of the new study wanted to know if the empathy deficits associated with psychopathy look different during a real conversation.

“Research on empathy in psychopathy has almost exclusively relied on questionnaires or tasks where people react to emotional pictures or videos. And while these methods capture some parts of empathy, they do not reflect how empathy works in everyday life,” said study author Matthias Burghart, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law.

“Outside the lab, empathy usually develops through interactions with other people. For this reason, we wanted to study empathy in a more naturalistic 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 their study, the researchers recruited 82 people from the community in New Zealand. These participants were divided into 41 interacting pairs. About half of the pairs consisted of people who already knew each other, like friends or romantic partners.

The other half of the pairs were complete strangers who met for the first time at the laboratory. The scientists assessed each participant for psychopathic traits using a standard personality survey. This survey measures specific traits like fearless dominance, self-centered impulsivity, and coldheartedness.

Self-centered impulsivity involves reckless behavior and a lack of self-control. Coldheartedness refers to a deep emotional detachment and a general indifference toward others. After completing the survey, the participants put on special vests that recorded their physical reactions.

These sensors tracked heart rate and electrodermal activity throughout the experiment. Electrodermal activity measures tiny changes in sweat gland activity on the skin, which indicates physical arousal or an emotional response. Measuring these bodily changes allows scientists to study physiological synchrony.

Physiological synchrony happens when the physical responses of two interacting people naturally align. When two people share a deep conversation, their bodies might begin to react in identical ways at the exact same time. The scientists wanted to see if people with higher psychopathic traits showed less of this physical alignment.

During the experiment, each pair engaged in four six-minute conversations about major life events. They took turns sharing personal stories about positive moments, negative events, and major regrets. The researchers recorded video and physical data while the participants simply talked to each other naturally.

After the conversations, each person sat at a computer and rewatched the videos. They used a computer mouse to continuously rate the intensity of their own emotions during the conversation. Then, they watched the videos a second time to rate how intense they thought their partner’s emotions were.

This allowed the scientists to measure two distinct types of empathy. The first type is empathic accuracy, which is the ability to correctly guess what another person is feeling. The researchers measured empathic accuracy by comparing one person’s guess with their partner’s actual self-rating.

The second type of empathy is affective sharing, which involves actually feeling the same emotions as the other person. To measure this, the scientists compared the self-reported emotional intensity of both people in the pair. High affective sharing meant both people felt strong emotions at the exact same moments.

The findings showed that people who knew each other had higher empathic accuracy. Friends and partners could guess each other’s emotional intensity better than strangers could. Yet, even strangers demonstrated a significant ability to read each other accurately.

When looking at psychopathic traits, the scientists found no connection between psychopathy and empathic accuracy. People with higher psychopathic traits were just as capable of identifying another person’s emotional state. They did not seem to lack the mental ability to recognize feelings.

However, psychopathic traits did affect emotional and physical connections. The researchers found that self-centered impulsivity was linked to lower levels of affective sharing. People with this impulsive trait were less likely to actually feel the emotions their conversation partner was experiencing.

The physical data provided evidence for a similar pattern. While heart rates did not synchronize between participants, skin responses did align for many pairs. The scientists noted that coldheartedness tended to be associated with lower physiological synchrony.

Individuals scoring higher in coldheartedness were less likely to physically mirror their partner’s physical arousal. This suggests a physical disconnect that matches their mental emotional detachment. The topic of the conversation did not seem to change these outcomes.

“Empathy problems in psychopathy may be broader than previously thought,” Burghart told PsyPost. “We found that physiological synchrony, which is an automatic process that occurs between people during interaction, may also be reduced. This could help explain why people with psychopathic traits struggle with affective empathy and opens up an exciting new direction for future research.”

These findings must be interpreted with caution due to a few limitations. The study used a relatively small sample size, which means the statistical power was low. This lack of power suggests that the results are preliminary and require replication in larger studies.

Another limitation involves the natural conversation design itself. Because participants were allowed to talk freely, the conversation dynamics varied greatly between pairs. Some people dominated the discussion, while others shared the speaking time equally. Future research could measure these conversation styles and include them in the data analysis.

The study, “Empathy, physiological synchrony, and psychopathy: preliminary insights from naturalistic dyadic interactions,” was authored by Matthias Burghart, Roydon Goldsack, Areito Echevarria, and Hedwig Eisenbarth.