A new psychological study sheds an unexpected light on psychopathy: some people display traits such as lack of empathy and emotional callousness — defined by experts with the term meanness — seem to better understand what others are thinking or feeling, while remaining emotionally detached.
The research, published in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatryinvolved 92 adults between 18 and 37 years old, without diagnoses of neurological or psychiatric disorders. Participants completed a test called Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition, based on watching a short realistic film.
In the video, four friends meet for dinner and experience moments of sarcasm, tension, flirtation and misunderstandings. While watching, viewers answer questions about what the characters think and feel. The answers are analyzed to understand whether the errors made derive from a superficial reading or from an overinterpretation of the situation.
Alongside the test, participants also filled out a questionnaire on psychopathic personality traits, divided into three categories:
Only those who had high scores in meanness performed better on the social test, demonstrating a more precise ability to understand others, committing fewer cognitive errors and, in particular, fewer overinterpretations.
They understand others better, but without emotional connection
This result is surprising, because psychopathy is often associated with difficulties in recognizing the emotions and intentions of others. But here another perspective emerges: those who are emotionally detached are able to read other people’s minds with greater coldness and clarity, without letting themselves be influenced by feelings.
This ability can have a dark side: knowing how to accurately interpret what others think or feel can become a tool of manipulation if the empathy that normally guides prosocial behavior is missing.
It is therefore not an advantage in a positive sense: these people are not more empathetic, but simply more able to understand others from a cognitive point of view, as if they were analyzing a scene from the outside, without involvement.
Men are more imprecise than women, but coldness remains the key factor
The researchers also took into account intelligence, autistic traits and gender. It turns out that men commit more cognitive errors on average than women, but this difference does not influence the link between meanness and performance.
Those who are “colder”, therefore, show a clearer mental reading ability, without however being more understanding or supportive. They no longer make errors of underestimation, but simply read between the lines better, without letting themselves be overwhelmed by emotions.
New questions about how we measure the ability to understand others
Another interesting point concerns the way in which the so-called theory of mind is measured, that is, the ability to understand what others think. Many studies have relied on visual tests (such as reading emotions in the eyes), but this “cinematic” test seems to offer an assessment closer to everyday reality, with complex interactions and ambiguous dialogues.
The study, however innovative, has limitations. The sample consisted primarily of young women, and the data are based on personal self-reports. For this reason, the researchers suggest expanding the research to more diverse groups, including older people or people with more marked psychopathic traits.
Understanding whether this cold ability to “read minds” develops with age or only manifests itself under certain conditions is one of the questions that future studies will try to clarify.
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