There are relationships that end and leave you with an uncomfortable question, the one that you keep turning over in your head even months later: how did I not see him? Yet you saw it. You saw the inconsistencies, you felt that strange thing in your stomach when he said one thing and did another, you sensed the exact moment when something didn’t add up. And you carried on anyway. Not because I was naive or naïve. Not because you were missing something. But because you are the type of person who, when he looks at others, always sees something salvageable in them.
Psychology has a name for this, and a study published in Personal Relationshipsconducted by the University of Innsbruck, tried to explain with concrete data what many of us have experienced firsthand: more empathetic people more often end up involved with manipulative partners. And the reason is much less banal – and much less cruel towards ourselves – than it seems.
It’s not a question of self-esteem, but of how you look at the world
The researchers built the study around two opposing psychological profiles. On the one hand the dark triad, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and daily sadism, that is, that subtle and daily ability to find satisfaction in harming others. On the other, the light triad: genuine trust in humanity, respect for the dignity of people, the tendency to treat those close to you as an end and not as a means. Whoever belongs to this second group is, in simple terms, that person who really listens to you, who doesn’t judge, who believes it even when perhaps he shouldn’t.
To observe how these profiles interact in real life, the researchers held six speed dating sessions in May 2023 — 128 participants, nearly fifteen hundred three-minute encounters, all analyzed. Before appointments, psychological questionnaires. After each meeting, a simple question: would you like to see this person again?
What emerged says something precise. People with Machiavellian or sadistic traits were rejected more often — they received fewer yeses, whether for short stories or something more serious. With one exception: when they were faced with someone with high light triad scores. In that case the probability of being rejected dropped significantly.
Empathic people don’t seek out manipulators. They simply let them pass where others would close the door. And it’s a huge difference, because it completely changes the way you can look back.
What happens when you let your guard down due to too much trust in others
Those who have a generous vision of humanity read the signs differently. Where another person sees an alarm bell and stops, those who belong to the bright profile see an old wound, a difficult moment, a fragility that asks for understanding. It is the same look that makes these people extraordinary friends, companions and present companions, colleagues on whom you can count. And it is the same look that, when faced with someone willing to take advantage of one, lowers that threshold of distrust that normally functions as protection.
The study also found a detail that is worth keeping in mind. Narcissism and psychopathy did not reduce dating success: these traits did not appear to penalize those who possessed them, regardless of the other person’s empathy. Machiavellianism and sadism, on the other hand, betrayed something already in the first interactions, something that even the most generous people were able to perceive. The narcissist in the courtship phase can be brilliant, capable of making you feel at the center of the world long enough to build a solid bond before the cracks begin to emerge. That’s the hardest part to recognize — and also the least dependent on your judgment.
The question that the authors of the research themselves recognize as the most important remains open: do empathic people perceive signals and choose to ignore them, or do they really read them differently? To answer this, longer studies would be needed, which follow couples over time instead of photographing only the first meeting. The researchers also suggest replicating these experiments in dating apps and queer relationships, to understand if the dynamic holds beyond the specific context of speed dating.
What the research says is already enough: people who believe in others, those who listen with patience and look with generosity, do not end up in the wrong relationships because they love each other little. They end up there because that same opening, without borders, becomes the exact point where someone can enter without knocking.
You might also be interested in:
