Behavioral and physiological insights into the interplay of affective perspective taking and psychopathic traits

Abstract Humans typically default to affective perspective taking when encountering someone in distress. However, this does not appear to be the case for individuals with high levels of psychopathy, which may contribute to their diminished empathic behavior. The question therefore arises whether empathy deficits related to psychopathy can be overcome, if one is explicitly instructed to engage in affective perspective taking. We tested this in a preregistered experimental study involving 87 participants (51% women) from the community. Participants were presented with images of distressed individuals, and initially not given any instructions (i.e., default response). Subsequently, they were instructed to imagine how they themselves would feel in the situation (i.e., imagine-self), how the other person feels in the situation (i.e., imagine-other), and to remain objective about what has happened to the person depicted (i.e., remain-objective). For each presented image, participants rated their level of empathic concern. In addition, skin conductance responses and heart rate were recorded throughout the task. The results revealed an interaction between psychopathic meanness and experimental conditions, wherein empathic concern ratings were lower at higher levels of meanness, but this was mitigated when individuals were deliberately engaging in affective perspective taking (i.e., imagine-self and imagine-other). No equivalent interaction effect was found for physiological responses. Our findings support the motivational framework of psychopathy, suggesting that empathy deficits in psychopathy do not indicate a general incapacity to empathize, but rather a reduced tendency to do so by default.