Does Gender Role Moderate the Relationship Between Empathy and Psychopathy

Psychopathic individuals are distinct from non-psychopathic individuals in affective,
interpersonal, and behavioral domains. A hallmark characteristic of psychopathic individuals is
lack of empathy. Gender differences have been identified with regards to psychopathy and
empathy. The current study examined two factors of empathy, Cognitive and Affective Empathy,
and employed a triarchic model of psychopathy, which included boldness, meanness, and
disinhibition as the three factors (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009). The current study examined
whether gender and/or gender roles moderated the relationship between the empathy and
psychopathy factors. It was expected that gender roles, rather than gender alone, would moderate
the relationship between empathy and psychopathy, such that masculine individuals would be
deficient in empathy and endorse more psychopathic characteristics, whereas feminine
individuals were expected to have more empathy and endorse fewer psychopathic characteristics.
As expected, in the current study, females demonstrated higher levels of femininity, as well as
empathy and cooperation, whereas males demonstrated higher levels of psychopathy
(specifically boldness and meanness) and the propensity to look out only for their best interests
and not cooperate with others. Further, masculine individuals demonstrated higher levels of
boldness and meanness. Results from an Exploratory Factor Analysis, Canonical Correlation,
and Hierarchical Regression indicated that affective empathy factors, rather than cognitive
empathy factors, demonstrated the strongest negative relationship with boldness and meanness.
Disinhibition demonstrated no relationship with either affective or cognitive empathy factors.
Implications of these results are discussed.