Science has revealed a dangerous personality type that is hard to spot. Research has found that the “dark empath” is one of the most toxic personality types. The toxic personality type can be more difficult to identify, which makes them even more treacherous because they can hide behind a fake veil of empathy.
Researchers published a paper titled: “The Dark Empath: Characterising dark traits in the presence of empathy.” The researchers claimed that they discovered a subtype of a psychopath, which uses evil empathy.
The authors of the scientific study of personalities of nearly 1,000 subjects explained that psychopaths lack empathy, but dark empaths have could understand the suffering of others and use it to their advantage.
“The dark empaths were not as aggressive as the traditional dark triad group – suggesting the latter are likely more dangerous. Nevertheless, the dark empaths were more aggressive than typicals and empaths, at least on a measure of indirect aggression – that is, hurting or manipulating people through social exclusion, malicious humor, and guilt-induction,” authors Nadja Heym and Alexander Sumich wrote.
This insidious personality type rarely employs physical violence, but still can be dangerous in other ways.
“This makes sense in a way, as to manipulate others for your own gain — or indeed enjoy the pain of others — you must have at least some capacity to understand them,” the authors explained.
“A dark empath may actually be more dangerous than a more cold and unfeeling dark triad type because the so-called dark empath can draw you in closer — and do more harm as a result,” Ramani Durvasula – a clinical psychologist – told PsychCentral. “The closer you are to someone, the more you can hurt them.”
“Individuals are considered dark empaths when they possess cognitive and/or affective empathy as well as characteristics from the ‘dark triad’ — a collective term for three dark personality traits: Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism,” the New York Post reported.
The dark personality types tend to be more extroverted than other personality types. They are very social and enjoy interacting with people, which makes them seem harmless.
The Conversation reported:
Moreover, dark empaths were a little higher in neuroticism, a type of negative thinking, but did not score higher on depression, anxiety or stress. Instead, their neuroticism may reflect sub-traits such as anger, hostility or self-doubt. Indeed, the dark empaths reported judging themselves more harshly than those with dark triad personalities. So it seems they may have a conscience, perhaps even disliking their dark side. Alternatively, their negative emotions may be a response to their self-loathing.
“The danger of this personality profile is that their empathy, and likely resulting social skills, make their darkness harder to spot,” the researchers caution. “We believe that dark empaths have the capacity to be callous and ruthless, but are able to limit such aggression.”