Prosocial Behavior and Physical Aggression in Psychopathy: Mediating Effect of Affective and Cognitive Empathy

Abstract

Psychopathy is related to low prosocial behavior and high aggression. The lack of empathy is one of the main features of primary psychopathy. It has been robustly indicated that empathy predicts both prosocial behavior and aggression. Empathy is composed of affective empathy and cognitive empathy. However, no studies examined that the affective and cognitive empathy as potential mediators of the relationship between psychopathy and prosocial behavior, and between psychopathy and aggression. This study investigated this mediating model. 132 undergraduate students completed the questionnaires measuring psychopathy, multidimensional empathy, prosocial behavior and aggression. Results showed that primary psychopathy was negatively associated with prosocial behavior, and this relation was mediated by affective empathy, while primary psychopathy was positively associated with physical aggression, and cognitive empathy mediated the relationship between them. This finding will offer the theoretical and practical implications by postulating different mediating process of prosocial and antisocial behavior in psychopathy.