Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 758–762

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Empathy deficits and trait emotional intelligence in psychopathy andMachiavellianism

Farah Ali, Ines Sousa Amorim, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic *

Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 6 April 2009Received in revised form 4 June 2009Accepted 12 June 2009Available online 15 July 2009

Keywords:Primary psychopathySecondary psychopathyMachiavellianismEmpathyEmotional intelligence

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.06.016

* Corresponding author. Address: DepartmentUniversity of London, New Cross, London SE146NW, U

E-mail address: pss02tc@gold.ac.uk (T. Chamorro-

This study investigated the relationships between psychopathy (primary and secondary), Machi-avellianism, trait emotional intelligence and empathy, using an image task that required an appropriateempathic response to the emotional displays of others (happy, sad and neutral). Results indicated thatprimary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of positiveaffect from sad stimuli, while secondary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associatedwith the experience of negative affect in response to neutral stimuli, and the opposite pattern was foundfor trait emotional intelligence. Regressional analyses demonstrated that secondary psychopathy, Machi-avellianism, trait emotional intelligence and state anxiety are important predictors when stimuli areambiguous.

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1. Introduction

The study of aversive personality traits has received muchattention in the past few years, particularly the non-clinical traitsof psychopathy and Machiavellianism (e.g., Lee & Ashton, 2005;Vernon, Villani, Vickers, & Harris, 2008). Within the personality-based approach to psychopathy there is a consensus that guiltless-ness, callousness, dishonesty, egocentricity, failure to form closeemotional bonds, low anxiety proneness, superficial charm andblame externalisation all represent core features (Hare, 1991). The-oretically, psychopathy is regarded as a heterogeneous conceptconsisting of primary psychopathy, which is characterised by fea-tures such as cruelty and lack of affect and secondary psychopathy,which is characterised by features such as impulsivity, neuroticismand aggression (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995).

Machiavellianism involves interpersonal strategies that pro-mote the use of deception, manipulation and exploitation, andthe Machiavellian individual can be described as cynical, domi-neering, aloof and practical (McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto, 1998).According to Christie (1970) Machiavellian individuals are success-ful manipulators characterised by: (a) lack of interpersonal affectin interpersonal relationships, (b) lack of concern with conven-tional morality, (c) lack of gross psychopathology, and (d) low ideo-logical commitment. Various researchers have noted theconceptual similarity between Machiavellianism and psychopathy

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Premuzic).

(e.g., McHoskey et al., 1998; Mealey, 1995) and it has been sug-gested that they denote a single construct (Lee & Ashton, 2005;McHoskey et al., 1998). However, Vernon et al. (2008) have dem-onstrated that Machiavellianism and psychopathy differ in herita-bility, and research indicates that although overlapping, they aredistinct constructs (Paulhus & Williams, 2002; Williams & Paulhus,2004).

Unsurprisingly, psychopathy (Malterer, Glass, & Newman,2008) and Machiavellianism (Austin, Farrelly, Black, & Moore,2007) have been recently associated with lower trait emotionalintelligence (also known as trait emotional self-efficacy). Individu-als high in trait emotional intelligence are good at managing theirstress levels and demonstrate enhanced psychosocial functioning,such as better social relationships (e.g., Schutte et al., 2001).

Being able to empathise is an important part of emotional intel-ligence and a defining criterion of clinical psychopathy is reducedempathic responding to victims (Hare, 1991). The ability to repeat-edly cause serious harm to others is an indicator of a profound dis-turbance in an appropriate ‘‘empathic” response to the suffering ofanother (Blair, 2005). Empathy is known to inhibit and moderateaggression (Richardson, Hammock, Smith, & Gardner, 1994;Wheeler, George, & Dahl, 2002). Past research indicates that clini-cal psychopathic individuals show a selective empathic deficit inthat they are impaired in the recognition of sad and fearful facialexpressions (e.g., Montagne et al., 2005).

Although investigators have recently begun to extend findingsfrom emotional deficits to psychopathy in normal populations,only a few studies have looked at whether empathy deficits existin non-clinical samples (e.g., Del Gaizo & Falkenbach, 2008;

1 All images are available on request.

F. Ali et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 758–762 759

Mahmut, Homewood, & Stevenson, 2008), this is surprising, espe-cially when research with non-clinical samples has found that de-spite lower base-rates, there is evidence for diverse expressions ofpsychopathic traits across the population (Skeem, Poythress,Edens, Lilienfeld, & Cale, 2003). Del Gaizo and Falkenbach’s(2008) study indicated that primary psychopathic traits were pos-itively correlated with accuracy of perception of fearful faces, whilesecondary psychopathic traits were not related to emotional recog-nition. Mahmut et al.’s (2008) study indicated that individualsscoring highly on psychopathy demonstrated low levels of empa-thy on an emotional empathy questionnaire; the EEQ (Mehrabian& Epstein, 1972).

Analogous to the psychopathic personality, conventional moral-ity is not a concern to Machiavellian individuals; instead, theydemonstrate shallow emotional involvement with others andsanction behaviour which is emotionally-manipulative (Austinet al., 2007). Because individuals high in Machiavellianism arelikely to exploit others and to view others in a goal-oriented man-ner (they see people ‘‘as a means to an end”), unsurprisinglyMachiavellianism has demonstrated negative correlations withempathy (e.g., Austin et al., 2007; Wastell & Booth, 2003).

The aim of the current study was to further explore the relation-ships between non-clinical psychopathy, Machiavellianism, traitemotional intelligence and deficits in empathy using a purposely-designed visual task to assess appropriateness of empathic re-sponses to the emotional displays of others.

Hoffman (2000) defined empathy as ‘‘feelings that are morecongruent with another’s situation than with one’s own situation”(p. 30), while Mehrabian and Epstein (1972) defined emotionalempathy as a ‘‘vicariously emotional response to the perceivedemotional experiences of others” (p. 525). These definitions sug-gest an affective reaction (‘‘affective/emotional empathy”; see Lo-soya & Eisenberg, 2001), not just a cognitive ability to readanother person’s thoughts or feelings correctly (‘‘cognitive empa-thy”). Following this line of thought, this study is concerned withwhether an individual experiences an appropriate empathic re-sponse rather than how capable he or she is of such an experience,hence the use of an empathy task that is not limited to emotionrecognition.

Although psychopathy is considered a heterogeneous concept,many emotional deficit studies have approached it as homoge-neous, potentially missing important differences between thetwo. An important difference between primary and secondary psy-chopathy is that negative affect is notably absent from primarypsychopathy, whereas secondary psychopathy is associated withnegative affect (Del Gaizo & Falkenbach, 2008). For this reason,the current study included a measure of state anxiety in order tomeasure the levels of anxiety experienced by participants at partic-ular points during the study. Following on from findings from pre-vious research it was hypothesised that primary and secondarypsychopathy and Machiavellianism would be associated with lowemotional intelligence and empathic deficiencies, i.e. the expres-sion of inappropriate affect in response to images of positive andnegative affective content.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

Participants were 84 undergraduates (67 female) who partici-pated in the study in exchange for course credits. Their ages rangedfrom 18 to 46 years (M = 20.7, SD = 4.1); 30 were White British(36%), 23 White Other (27%), six Black Caribbean (7%) and fiveBlack African (6%). The remaining 20 participants (24%) were ofMixed, South Asian, East Asian and Arab ethnicity. Participantsall had normal, or corrected to normal vision.

2.2. Materials

Levenson self-report psychopathy scale (LSRP): The LSRP scale(Levenson et al., 1995) is a 26-item self-report measure designedto assess psychopathic attributes in non-institutionalised samplesand to evaluate both the behavioural and personality traits com-monly associated with psychopathy in the literature. The primarypsychopathy scale consists of 16 items, ranging from disagreestrongly (1) to agree strongly (4), designed to assess the core per-sonality features described by Cleckley (1988), such as being self-ish, uncaring and manipulative. The secondary psychopathy scaleconsists of 10 items assessing anti-social behaviour, a self-defeat-ing lifestyle and impulsivity. Cronbach’s a in the current studywere .84 for the primary psychopathy scale and .72 for the second-ary psychopathy scale. The LSRP is both reliable and valid (McHos-key et al., 1998).

Mach-IV: Machiavellianism was assessed with the Mach-IV(Christie & Geis, 1970), which has 20 items covering the use of de-ceit in interpersonal relationships, a cynical attitude to human nat-ure and a lack of concern for conventional morality. Participantsindicate their response on a seven-point scale ranging from dis-agree strongly (1) to agree strongly (7), with higher scores indicat-ing higher levels of Machiavellianism. The reliability and thevalidity of the Mach-IV are well documented (Fehr, Samsom, &Paulhus, 1992). Cronbach’s a in the current study was .77.

Spielberger state-trait anxiety (STAI): The STAI (Spielberger, Gor-such, & Lushene, 1970) consists of two 20-item scales: the stateand trait anxiety scales. In this study, only items from the SAI wereused (STAI Form Y-1). This is a 20-item self-evaluation question-naire with responses to the statements about feelings at the pres-ent time ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much so), with higherscores indicative of greater state anxiety. In the current study, sixitems of the SAI were used due to time constraints. Participantswere given the SAI to complete before and after viewing theimages. Cronbach’s a in the current study was .82. for time oneand .80 for time two.

Trait emotional intelligence questionnaire – short form (TEIQue–SF): The TEIQue–SF (Petrides & Furnham, 2006) is a 30-item self-re-port scale that yields a global measure of trait emotional intelli-gence and emotional self-efficacy, namely, the ability to identifyand manage one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. Theshort form is based on the 153-item TEIQue and has demonstratedadequate reliability and validity (Petrides & Furnham, 2006). Par-ticipants are asked to rate their degree of agreement with eachitem on a seven-point Likert-type scale with responses rangingfrom completely disagree (1) to completely agree (7). Cronbach’sa in this study was .90.

Empathy image task using the self-assessment manikin (SAM):1 Tocreate the image set we initially selected 45 images; 15 were classi-fied as representing sadness, 15 representing happiness and 15 rep-resenting neutral emotion. The stimuli were selected from thegettyimages� database, which depicts individuals of various ages,gender and ethnicity showing a range of emotions. Each image con-sisted of one individual who was the focal point of the image. Threeindependent raters (all psychology students) then rated the emo-tions displayed by the individual in each picture. Subsequently, nineimages were discarded due to inter-rater disagreement over theemotion displayed (i.e. disagreement between sadness and fearand happiness and surprise). The resulting image set consisted of36 images of male and female individuals expressing sad, happyand neutral emotional expressions, namely, 12 images of sadness(overtly sad expressions; a = .81) and 12 images of happiness

760 F. Ali et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 758–762

(overtly happy expressions; a = .84) and 12 images of emotionallyneutral expressions (a = .78).

The SAM (Bradley & Lang, 1994), a non-verbal pictorial assess-ment methodology of a human-like stimulus, was used to assessaffective responding after participants viewed each image. TheSAM permits the assessment of the core dimensions of emotionalexperience: valence (scale 1), arousal (scale 2) and control/domi-nance (scale 3). SAM ratings are made along five figures for eachscale. Participants select their current level of affective state alongthese dimensions on a nine-point scale by placing an ‘‘X” over anyof the five figures in each scale, or between any two figures. Totalscores range from zero to nine for each dimension. In the currentstudy, the valence scale of the SAM was used. Valence refers towhether a stimulus is viewed as pleasant or unpleasant (Lang,1995). Figures depicting valence range from a low-spirited, frown-ing manikin to a widely smiling one, going through a middle neu-tral stance. The SAM has sound psychometric properties and hasbeen successfully employed to measure affective responses (Brad-ley & Lang, 1994). The SAM scale was chosen for the current study,rather than a simple emotion identifying task, because it allows aninsight into the emotions felt vicariously by participants in re-sponse to the emotions of others. It has also previously been usedalongside other measures in empathy studies (e.g. Brown, Bradley,& Lang, 2006; Danziger, Prkachin, & Willer, 2006). Cronbach’s a forthe valence scale in the current study was .80 for valence to the sadimages, .87 for valence to the happy images and .60 for valence tothe neutral images.

2.3. Procedure

Every participant was tested individually in a quiet universityroom (lab cubicle). Each participant was seated in a comfortablechair behind a small table approximately 2 m from the screen onwhich the slide stimuli were to be displayed. Participants com-pleted the questionnaire battery and were then presented witheach image sequentially. The 36 slides were projected individuallyonto a screen at the front of the room, with the order of presenta-tion of the pictures randomised for each participant. Participantswere instructed to look at each image and rate their affect in re-sponse to the image on the valence scale (scale 1) of the SAM.Although no limits were issued for viewing the images, all partic-ipants were told to ‘‘study the image carefully” before responding.Once they had completed the valence scale for that particular im-age, the next image was displayed.

3. Results

3.1. Correlations

Intercorrelations among primary psychopathy, secondary psy-chopathy, Machiavellianism, state anxiety (time one and timetwo), trait emotional intelligence and valence (to the happy, sadand neutral images) are shown in Table 1. Gender correlated withprimary psychopathy and Machiavellianism, with males scoringhigher on both traits. Primary psychopathy positively correlatedwith Machiavellianism and valence to the sad images. The correla-tional analyses indicated that secondary psychopathy positivelycorrelated with Machiavellianism, state anxiety time one and stateanxiety time two. Secondary psychopathy correlated negativelywith trait emotional intelligence and valence to the neutral images,while Machiavellianism negatively correlated with trait emotionalintelligence and with valence to the neutral images, but correlatedpositively with valence to the sad images. Trait emotional intelli-gence correlated negatively with state anxiety time one and stateanxiety time two and correlated positively with valence to the neu-

tral images. State anxiety at time one and time two correlated neg-atively with valence to the neutral images.

3.2. Multiple regressions

Two standard multiple regressions were performed next; thefirst with valence to sad images as the criterion variable andMachiavellianism and primary psychopathy as predictors and thesecond regression with valence to neutral images as the criterionvariable and Machiavellianism, secondary psychopathy, trait emo-tional intelligence and state anxiety (time one) entered as predic-tors. State anxiety time two was excluded from the regressionsas it was highly correlated with state anxiety time one. Results ofthese analyses are presented in Table 2. In the first regression, pri-mary psychopathy and Machiavellianism did not significantly pre-dict the variability in valence to sad images (F(2,81) = 2.61,adjusted R2 = .04, p > .05). In the second regression, secondary psy-chopathy, Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and stateanxiety significantly predicted the variability in valence to neutralimages (F(4,79) = 3.62, adjusted R2 = .11, p < .01).

Sobel’s tests of mediation (Sobel, 1982) were then performed inthree cases where mediation conditions were met (Baron & Kenny,1986), with one model proving to be significant. The effect of sec-ondary psychopathy on valence to neutral images was fully medi-ated by trait emotional intelligence (Z = �2.30, p < .05), withsecondary psychopathy negatively affecting trait emotional intelli-gence. State anxiety did not significantly mediate the effect of sec-ondary psychopathy on valence to neutral images (Z = �1.64,p > .05) and trait emotional intelligence did not significantly medi-ate the effect of Machiavellianism on valence to neutral images(Z = 1.73, p > .05).

4. Discussion

The present study set out to examine whether non-clinical psy-chopathy (primary and secondary) and Machiavellianism wereassociated with inappropriate empathic responses to the emo-tional displays of others. Our results suggest that primary psychop-athy and Machiavellianism are positively associated withexperiencing positive affect (valence) when looking at sad images.This finding is consistent with the idea that individuals high in pri-mary psychopathy do not experience negative emotions (e.g.,Cleckley, 1988; Mealey, 1995) and therefore images of sadnessare unlikely to cause them any sort of distress. Interestingly, inthe current study, individuals high in primary psychopathy actu-ally responded with positive affect (rather than simply notresponding with negative affect), to negative images. Research inclinical samples has demonstrated that psychopathic individualsshow reduced autonomic responses to stimuli associated withthe distress and sadness of another individual (e.g., Blair, 1999;House & Milligan, 1976); therefore it is possible that individualswho score highly in primary psychopathic traits would actuallyexperience, or at least report, pleasurable affect from the sadnessof others. However, a replication of this finding is needed beforesuch conjectures are made, especially when considering the lackand contradictory nature of research addressing the relationshipbetween psychopathy and sadism (e.g., Kirsch & Becker, 2007).

The apparent dysfunction of an appropriate empathic responsein primary psychopathy in this sample lends support to researchindicating that psychopathic individuals show a selective emo-tional empathy dysfunction by not processing sad (and fearful)expressions appropriately (Blair, 1995).

When ambiguous (i.e. neutral) images were presented, second-ary psychopathy, Machiavellianism and state anxiety (time oneand time two) were positively associated with the experience ofnegative affect. The association between secondary psychopathy

Table 1Intercorrelations: Bivariate Pearson correlation coefficients.

M SD a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1 Gender .12 .25* �.01 .29** .05 �.12 �.09 �.20 .21 .152 Age 20.62 4.12 �.13 �.01 �.14 .06 .17 �.03 .03 �.03 .123 Primary psychopathy 30.88 7.68 .84 .33** .70** �.17 .01 �.01 �.18 .22* �.114 Secondary psychopathy 22.00 5.00 .72 .36** �.48** .28** .31** �.02 �.02 �.23*

5 Machiavellianism 95.30 7.68 .77 �.23* �.01 .06 �.15 .23* �.22*

6 Trait emotional intelligence 143.93 24.26 .90 �.60** �.64** .01 .06 .35**

7 State anxiety (time 1) 11.67 3.71 .82 .77** �.16 �.07 �.28*

8 State anxiety (time 2) 12.13 3.57 .80 �.20 �.03 �.34**

9 Valence happy images 7.08 .94 .87 �.48** .1910 Valence sad images 3.16 .96 .80 .2011 Valence neutral images 5.17 .56 .60

n = 84.* p < .05 level (2-tailed).** p < .01 level (2-tailed).

Table 2Summary of regression analyses.

Criterion Predictors B SE B b t p

Valence to sad images Constant 1.82 0.64 2.85 0.01Machiavellianism 0.01 0.01 0.16 1.07 0.29Primary psychopathy 0.01 0.02 0.10 0.69 0.49

Valence to neutral images Constant 5.36 0.88 6.12 0.00Secondary psychopathy �0.01 0.01 �0.04 �0.28 0.78Machiavellianism �0.01 0.01 �0.16 �0.14 0.16Trait emotional intelligence 0.01 0.01 0.21 1.45 0.15State anxiety (time one) �0.02 0.20 �0.14 �1.08 0.28

Note: R2 = .06 and DR2 = .04 (p > .05) for valence to sad images; R2 = .16 and DR2 = .11 (p < .01) for valence to neutral images.

F. Ali et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 758–762 761

and negative affect experienced in the presence of ambiguousstimuli is consistent with research findings on the positive link be-tween negative emotions and this trait (e.g., Del Gaizo & Falken-bach, 2008). Although Machiavellianism is related to bothprimary and secondary psychopathy, there is an important differ-ence between Machiavellianism and primary psychopathy; the for-mer trait is linked to heightened experience of anxiety (McHoskeyet al., 1998), something which is notably absent from the latter(Cleckley, 1988; Lykken, 1995). Consequently, in a similar vein toindividuals high in secondary psychopathy, our findings showedthat individuals high in Machiavellianism seem to have also expe-rienced negative affect from the neutral images.

To date, we are aware of only one other study that has indicatedan inappropriate response to neutral faces. In a study by Daddset al. (2006), children scoring highly in psychopathic traits had dif-ficulty in recognising neutral faces in an emotion recognition task;neutral faces where often mistakenly rated as angry. To furtherunderstand this apparent misattribution to neutral faces more re-search into facial emotion processing/recognition should use neu-tral expressions alongside other emotions in samples withpsychopathic traits.

Trait emotional intelligence was associated with attributing po-sitive affect to the neutral images and negatively associated withsecondary psychopathy, Machiavellianism and state anxiety attime one and time two. This finding is consistent with studiesshowing that individuals higher in trait emotional intelligencehave a more positive outlook in general (Austin, Saklofske, & Egan,2005) and experience greater psychological well-being (Mavroveli,Petrides, Rieffe, & Bakker, 2007). No association was found be-tween primary psychopathy and trait emotional intelligence; thisis in contrast to previous research as Malterer et al. (2008) founda negative association between primary psychopathy and a mea-sure of emotional intelligence, however, this association was quitesmall. In relation to the mediation effect, it was not surprising that

secondary psychopathy negatively affected trait emotional intelli-gence when considering that secondary psychopathy is character-ised by features such as aggression and impulsivity.

Males were associated with higher scores of primary psychopa-thy and Machiavellianism. This is consistent with self-report evi-dence that indicates that males score higher than females inpsychopathy (e.g., Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001) and Machiavellianism(e.g., McHoskey, 2001).

The results of the regressions highlight the importance of traitemotional intelligence when it comes to explaining why individu-als higher in secondary psychopathy interpret emotionally neutralimages in terms of negative affect; thus when individuals arematched in trait emotional intelligence secondary psychopathyno longer affects responses to neutral images. On the other hand,Machiavellianism and state anxiety affect these responses inde-pendently of trait emotional intelligence.

There are limitations to the current study, including the use of asmall, majority female, undergraduate sample, which may makegeneralisability to other non-clinical groups difficult. Nevertheless,undergraduate samples have the advantage of being relatively freeof severe Axis I disorders (e.g., major depressive disorder, alcoholdependence), which could distort the reporting of enduring per-sonality traits and personality disorder features (Lilienfeld & Pen-na, 2001).

In the current study, only two of the basic emotions were used,this study could be extended by also using surprised, disgusted, an-gry, and fearful images. It appears that ambiguous images work thebest when predicting individual differences in the traits examinedin the current study. The use of static images and the low emo-tional involvement of impersonal images may have limited thevalidity of empathic responsiveness on behalf of participants; be-cause emotions displayed in the real world vary in intensity andcontent. Future studies could use less artificial means for invokingemotional empathy such as video footage. To date, no studies have

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measured autonomic responses to affective material in a non-clin-ical sample with psychopathic traits; this may be worthwhile be-cause clinical psychopathic samples have demonstrated reducedautonomic responses to emotional stimuli.

It should also be noted that while copious research has investi-gated deficits in facial emotion processing in psychopathy, to date,apart from the current study, no study has investigated this in rela-tion to Machiavellianism. This may be worthwhile, not only whentaking into account the results of the current study, but also previ-ous research which has demonstrated that Machiavellianism isassociated with empathic deficits.

Despite these limitations, the current results suggest that evenin a small student sample, brief self-reports of constructs related toemotional-processing deficits are predictive of individual differ-ences in emotional reactions to images of neutral emotionalvalence.

We hope that the current study will encourage further researchinto aversive personality traits and emotional deficits in non-clin-ical populations and the use of studies that do not rely solely onself-report inventories. Continuing research into the emotionaldeficits manifested in aversive personality traits such as psychop-athy and Machiavellianism may facilitate a greater understandingof both non-clinical and clinical psychopathology.

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