homo are a social species and empathy , the ability to feel for others is fundamental to how we wreak . There is a belief that people that score extremely in tests on psychopathy , narcissism , and Machiavellianism ( the “ dark tercet ” of psychological traits ) want empathy . young enquiry suggests that this is not the case . They can feel for others but they just choose not to .
In a study published inPersonality and Individual Differences , researchers asked 278 international player to discharge an anonymous on-line survey to appraise their dark triad levels and cognitive ability . Their empathy was assessed in two way .
The participants completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index ( IRI ) , which measures how disposed people are to be empathetic . The test lists program line such as “ Before criticizing somebody , I strain to imagine how I would feel if I were in their blank space ” , and asks participant to range the extent to which they agree . The second part was the Multifaceted Empathy Test ( MET ) . In this test , participant are show 20 images of positive emotion and 20 images of damaging ones and have to state which they opine are positivist and which are negative . This is to measure whether they can recognise how other citizenry feel .
The team found that the people that grade highly for the dark triad were perfectly subject of recognizing the emotion of others based on the MET , they just did n’t seem interested in considering those feelings when it came down to it .
“ The present study aimed at investigating empathy in terms of power and tendency with blue personality , " the researcher indite in thepaper . " The research enquiry was whether persons scoring high on disconsolate trait ( Machiavellianism , psychopathy , and self-love ) mostly miss the ability to empathise ( by reading objective emotions in faces ) or mostly lack the inclination ( trait ) to empathize . ”
As is the case for any study , there are important limitations that need to be taken into account statement . First of all , this is not about the great unwashed who are actually diagnosed with psychopathy or narcissism , as the field used a self - judgement questionnaire . The employment of an online - only approach also has potential issues as the researcher were not able to assess the English proficiency of the participants . What ’s more , the sample does not represent the whole population . The team recruited LinkedIn users and the majority of the participants were university educated and had an interest in human resources .
[ H / T : PsyPost ]
