A “fine-cuts” approach disentangling psychopathic, autistic and alexithymic traits in their associations with affective, cognitive and motor empathy

Ayache, J; Stevenson, N; Patel, E; Sumich, A; Dumas, G; Heym, N

NTU > IRep

IRep

A “fine-cuts” approach disentangling psychopathic, autistic and alexithymic traits in their associations with affective, cognitive and motor empathy

Tools

Ayache, J, Stevenson, N ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1875-5519, Patel, E, Sumich, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4333-8442, Dumas, G and Heym, N ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2414-8854, 2025. A “fine-cuts” approach disentangling psychopathic, autistic and alexithymic traits in their associations with affective, cognitive and motor empathy. Personality and Individual Differences, 246: 113279. ISSN 0191-8869

Preview

Text
2524125_Heym.pdf - Published version
Download (900kB) | Preview

Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2025.113279

Abstract

Atypical empathy is seen in relation to psychopathy and autistic traits; however, studies typically conflate affective and cognitive facets of empathy. Moreover, motor empathy has been suggested as another facet of empathy, advocating for further delineation of empathy dimensions. In addition, alexithymia may affect responding to emotional, cognitive or motor states in others. The current study investigated how psychopathic, autistic and alexithymic traits are associated with those empathy facets. Nonclinical participants (N = 212) completed online self-report measures of affective, cognitive and motor empathy, primary and secondary psychopathy, autistic and alexithymic traits. A subsample (N = 157) also completed a behavioral measure of motor empathy (i.e., behavioral synchrony) using a virtual agent. Whilst all traits were associated with reduced cognitive empathy and behavioral synchrony; path analyses supported a mediation model of cognitive empathy difficulties through alexithymia only for primary psychopathy. Secondary psychopathy and alexithymia were associated with increased motor empathy, specifically tendencies to mimic negative emotions. In contrast, primary psychopathy was associated with reduced affective empathy and inhibition of positive emotion imitation, despite reporting self-other overlap experiences induced by behavioral synchrony. Overall, these findings highlight the need for a “fine-cuts” approach; delineating the role of empathy subfacets in atypical empathy.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Personality and Individual Differences
Creators:	Ayache, J., Stevenson, N., Patel, E., Sumich, A., Dumas, G. and Heym, N.
Publisher:	Elsevier BV
Date:	November 2025
Volume:	246
ISSN:	0191-8869
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.paid.2025.113279 DOI 2524125 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	07 Nov 2025 08:26
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2025 08:26
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54693