Research Confirms A Troubling Fact About Dark Triad Personality Traits

 Research Confirms A Troubling Fact About Dark Triad Personality Traits

According to the Journal of Individual Differences, Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and neurotypical peers exhibit opposing patterns in empathy and Dark Triad traits, situated 180 degrees apart within a shared psychological space.

Empathy is studied alongside Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy), although contrasting personality traits. Past research highlights how the Dark Triad traits are negatively associated with empathy, especially affective empathy, which involves emotional resonance.

High-functioning autism disorder (ASD) in adolescents has been investigated in this study. Adolescents whose cognitive disorder empathy is often impaired, but affective empathy remains intact.

The study involved 120 participants: 60 adolescents (29 with ASD and 31 neurotypical) and one of their parents each.

Data were collected and structured for analysis using Smallest Space Analysis, a technique that visualizes corrections between variables in a two-dimensional space.

According to the study’s findings, empathy and Dark traits occupy opposing regions in a shared two-dimensional space, separated by an angle of 180 degrees. Adolescents with ASD and neurotypical adolescents have a consistent pattern, which indicates a fundamental divergence between these constructs.

A significant negative correlation between psychopathy and affective empathy, suggesting that emotional deficits in psychopathy are particularly pronounced, were some of the key findings from the study.

In contrast, adolescents with ASD showed a closer alignment between parent-reported empathy and their self-reported affective empathy, consistent with the preservation of emotional resonance often observed in ASD.

Despite these broad patterns, parent-reported empathy measures did not differentiate between cognitive and affective components, highlighting differences in how empathy manifests and is perceived across the two groups.

The outcome supported the hypothesis that empathy and Dark Triad traits are psychologically opposed constructs.