What Do Psychopaths Really Understand About Emotions?

KEY POINTS

• Individuals with psychopathic tendencies show a lack of empathy, but they can also be charming and manipulative.
• Low empathy could stem from low awareness of others' emotions, while manipulation skills seem to suggest high awareness of others' emotions.
• A study shows lower emotional awareness in those with greater psychopathy levels, but only if they also experienced childhood abuse/neglect.
• Many high-psychopathy individuals without childhood abuse/neglect had high levels of emotional awareness, possibly helping them be manipulative.

When you hear the word psychopath, some scary people come to mind. In the extreme, psychopathy can be associated with torture, murder, and an utter disregard for the well-being of others.

An open question, however, is why psychopaths do not show empathy or remorse for the suffering they cause in others. One possibility is that they have low emotional awareness. In other words, they could fail to show empathy simply because they don’t recognize or pay attention to how others are feeling; that is, they may not really know about or understand others' emotions. But another possibility is that they truly don’t care. In other words, they might be very aware that another person is suffering, but simply feel no desire to help them (and perhaps even enjoy it).

In a recent study [1], we tried to answer this question by measuring both emotional awareness and psychopathic tendencies in the same individuals. This allowed us to test whether higher psychopathy scores were associated with lower emotional awareness scores, or whether high-psychopathy individuals were just as aware of emotions as anyone else.

What did we find? As is often the case in research, the answer wasn’t a simple “yes” or “no.” Instead, as I will explain below, it appeared to depend on whether an individual experienced childhood maltreatment, such as abuse or neglect.

Before conducting the study, we weren’t sure what we might find. This is because some psychopathic traits seem to indicate high emotional awareness, while others suggest low emotional awareness. For example, some psychopaths can be very charming and manipulative. This suggests they know how others are feeling and are good at exploiting that knowledge for their own gain. These so-called “successful psychopaths” can also attain corporate leadership positions that require good social and emotional skills [2].

On the other hand, many psychopaths have trouble paying attention to things that aren’t helpful in serving their own selfish goals [3]. So, you might think they are simply unaware of others’ emotions due to a lack of attention. Psychopaths show other traits linked to low emotional awareness as well, such as impulsivity and lack of reflective thinking [4, 5].

But there is also a third possibility: that some types of psychopathy are associated with low emotional awareness, while others are not. Although less frequently discussed outside of research settings, psychologists actually distinguish between two types of psychopathy: so-called “primary” and “secondary” psychopathy [6]. A major difference between these two types of psychopathy is in how a person’s traits were acquired.

Defining primary vs. secondary psychopathy

People with primary psychopathy may have been “born that way". In other words, they may have genes that promote psychopathic personality traits, and no specific event may have caused them to start acting the way they do.

In contrast, secondary psychopathy may be caused by childhood trauma, such as abuse/neglect. In other words, psychopathic tendencies in such individuals may develop in response to traumatic events as a coping mechanism. To be clear, the vast majority of people who experience childhood trauma do not become psychopaths, but this does appear to happen on occasion.

People with primary and secondary psychopathy also show important behavioral differences. For example, individuals with primary psychopathy tend to be more socially successful, deceitful, ruthless, and manipulative, and their emotional responses appear dampened. In contrast, those with secondary psychopathy can experience intense negative emotion (e.g., anger, frustration), they show greater risk-taking, impulsivity, short-term thinking, and antisocial/violent criminal behavior, and they often end up in prison [7]. When considering these differences, one might therefore think secondary psychopathy is more likely to involve low emotional awareness.

To examine this possibility, our study also gathered information about whether individuals had experienced childhood maltreatment, whether they felt intense negative emotions, and whether they showed other traits and behaviors consistent with primary vs. secondary psychopathy.

Read the full article on Psychology Today

Reflection: Do you belive that psychopaths are able to understand emotions?

#Psychopath #Understanding #Emotions

If you want to read more about psychopaths you can read another article here: Do You Know a Successful Psychopath?