⬇️ Prefer to listen instead? ⬇️
- 🧠 People high in psychopathic meanness show better mind-reading accuracy in complex social situations.
- ⚠️ This “social sharpness” doesn’t stem from empathy but from emotional detachment.
- 🧪 The MASC test shows real-life mind-reading behavior better than old laboratory methods.
- 🧍♂️ High meanness makes people less likely to over-think—they are less likely to read falsely into others’ intentions.
- 📉 Male gender is linked to more theory of mind errors, but this does not explain psychopathy findings.
Can Psychopathy Sharpen Your Mind-Reading Ability?
Can someone who lacks empathy still know exactly what you’re thinking—and use it against you? New research suggests this is true. A recent study found that people who score high in certain psychopathic traits, especially “meanness,” may actually be better than average at reading the thoughts and plans of others. Not because they care, but because they don’t. This finding makes our understanding of psychopathy more complex. It also leads to more questions about how cognitive empathy—also known as theory of mind—can be used to control others, not to connect.
Understanding Psychopathy and Theory of Mind
Psychopathy is a complex idea about personality, and people often don't understand it. It's marked not just by well-known bad traits like emotional coldness or antisocial behavior. It also includes many ways of acting and thinking that affect how people interact socially and emotionally.
Psychologists usually break psychopathy into three main parts:
- Boldness: This means they are socially dominant, confident, and not afraid. These people might seem charming or take big risks, even in situations most people avoid.
- Meanness: It means emotional callousness, no empathy, cruelty, and a strong emotional distance from others.
- Disinhibition: It means impulsivity, poor control over actions, and unstable emotions.
These three parts together make up a varied psychological picture. Not all people high in psychopathic traits show the same behaviors. For example, a person high in boldness might be a thrill-seeking entrepreneur, while someone high in meanness might be a cold manipulator.
On the other hand is theory of mind. This is your ability to figure out what other people are thinking, planning, or feeling. It’s how you can tell a friend is being sarcastic, understand unspoken things during a tense talk, or know what someone might feel even when they say “I’m fine.”
Theory of mind is often split into two important types:
- Cognitive empathy: The ability to understand what another person thinks or feels.
- Emotional empathy: The ability to feel emotions with someone else.
This difference is very important. A person might be very good at seeing your distress (cognitive empathy), but doesn't care at all about it (low emotional empathy). This ability to understand without caring forms the frightening set of social tools common in many people with psychopathic traits.
Can Psychopathic Traits Make Social Insight Better?
For a long time, people thought psychopathy meant weak empathy and bad moral choices. These people were thought to be “emotionally blind” to the feelings and plans of others, which caused problems with other people and antisocial behavior. But, more and more evidence has made this idea more complex.
Could some psychopathic people be more socially aware—but choose to use that awareness in a planned way?
Some studies show that people high in psychopathy have trouble knowing emotions and being sensitive to others. Other studies suggest the opposite: that certain psychopathic traits, especially those tied to controlling others or thinking coldly, may actually go with better abilities in understanding others' viewpoints and finding emotions.
So, what's different?
The answer might be in how people make mistakes or get things right when reading others. Earlier studies often measured total errors in social understanding but didn’t tell the difference why those errors happened. Mistakes in understanding someone could come from:
- Not thinking enough (missing real signs),
- Thinking too much (seeing things that aren't there).
This matters, because those styles of mistake show different brain mechanisms. And importantly, the most recent study by Gillespie and Abu-Akel (2025) closes this gap. It does this by looking at the type of social error and linking it to specific psychopathic traits.
Why “Meanness” Matters Most
In Gillespie and Abu-Akel’s study, one trait was special among the psychopathy triad: meanness. Not boldness. Not disinhibition. Only meanness showed fewer social thinking errors—especially the kinds of errors where someone thinks someone has a social plan that isn’t really there.
That finding makes you think.
Traits grouped under meanness include cruelty, no bond with others, no guilt, and not caring about others' pain. People high in this trait are not bothered by others’ distress. And that lack of caring might make their minds sharper, not duller.
By going around the emotional influence most people bring into understanding social signs, those high in meanness may approach scenes in a very clear and distant way. They process facial expressions, tone of voice, and things people do that don't match objectively. They see them as data to process instead of distress to feel themselves.
Rather than being “bad at reading people,” these people may actually be better at it—just worse at caring.
Over-Thinking vs. Under-Thinking
Much of the confusion in psychology around psychopathy and social understanding comes from a failure to tell the difference between mind-reading accuracy and style of mistake. Two main types of mistakes happen when using theory of mind:
- Over-thinking: Seeing too many or wrong social reasons. For example, assuming someone is mad at you when they’re actually just tired.
- Under-thinking: Missing emotional or thinking signs altogether, like not realizing someone is joking or being sarcastic.
What Gillespie and Abu-Akel found was that people high in meanness made fewer over-thinking mistakes. This means they were less likely to see emotions, plans, or intentions that weren’t really there. They didn’t add in emotions that weren't there. They didn’t guess too much or make things bigger—they kept their thoughts held back.
And importantly, this looks like the kind of behavior you’d expect from careful people who control others: cold, clear plans, and few false ideas. They read just enough to act—without doing too much and showing their plan.
It’s this kind of practical, planned, and helpful mind-reading that shows the bad side of cognitive empathy separated from emotional empathy.
A Study Based on Real-Life Social Situations
To check how well people could read minds, researchers didn't use old tests like cartoons or facial expressions. Instead, they used a more realistic and engaging method: the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC).
This test involves watching a 15-minute film that shows a group of friends interacting at a dinner party. The story is full of real-life spoken and unspoken small details—jealousies, flirtations, disagreements, and awkward silences.
After each scene, people must answer multiple-choice questions like:
- “Why did she say that?”
- “What is he feeling right now?”
- “What is she likely to do next?”
These answers aim at actual mind-reading ability. They force people to figure things out and guess what will happen in a place full of emotions and where the situation matters a lot.
Compared to static image tests or sentence-based problems, the MASC copies the human social environment much better. It gets not just what people know about emotions—but how they spot and use that knowledge in a certain situation.
Can Mind-Reading Be… Dangerous?
At first, good mind-reading skills might seem helpful socially. We admire those who can “read a room.” These are people who understand hard social feelings and act the right way.
But when paired with low emotional empathy, this thinking skill becomes morally unclear—and possibly dangerous.
Think about what mind-reading without kindness could look like:
- Controlling romantic partners: Learning what someone fears most and appearing supportive—until it's used as a weapon in future conflict.
- Gaining trust in important situations: Getting people to like them in business or politics not to partner, but to use unfairly.
- Making lies just right: Knowing exactly what to say or confess to appear trustworthy even with reasons to trick people.
This ability to see through you—without feeling for you—describes why some people become people who prey on trust rather than people who connect with others.
In essence, they don’t just lie better—they understand better what lies will work on you.
Did Other Factors Affect the Results?
Could this sharpness be explained by other traits—like intelligence or gender?
The researchers thought about these worries and checked for several other things that could mix up the results:
- IQ estimates: Made sure raw thinking ability didn’t change the results unfairly.
- Autism spectrum traits: Made sure problems with social thinking from other brain development issues were not the cause.
- Gender: Male participants made more theory of mind errors overall—but this didn’t change the main findings.
Even after all these other things were checked, meanness still linked to better mind-reading accuracy, especially through less over-thinking.
This suggests that the link is not by chance—it’s a core part of the emotional make-up of mean-spirited psychopathy.
When Theory of Mind Lacks Kindness
Understanding someone else’s mind—knowing how they think or feel—is not good or bad on its own. What makes it good or bad is what someone does with that understanding.
In people high in Dark Triad traits—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism—cognitive empathy becomes a tool, not a bridge.
- Machiavellianism adds clever planning.
- Narcissism makes people want praise and success for themselves.
- Psychopathy adds distance and no regret.
These traits form a group of self-focused personality traits aimed at social control rather than real give and take.
In such cases, theory of mind doesn’t help understanding—it allows them to use others unfairly, giving people who like to be in charge a hidden advantage in influencing others.
How These Abilities Change Over Time
Another interesting point is how these abilities might change.
Older studies on teens with cold, uncaring traits showed big problems with social understanding. Young people who were emotionally distant scored low on theory of mind tasks.
But with adults—like in the study by Gillespie and Abu-Akel—the pattern changes.
What changed?
Researchers think that as people mature, especially those with psychopathic traits, they may learn through experience what emotions look like—even if they never feel them. They practice spotting patterns across many social places, slowly building up a mental guide of other minds.
This suggests a change to make up for something: emotional blindness in youth learning to copy understanding in adulthood. It’s frightening, but effective—like a social robot making itself just right for best control.
Rethinking How We Measure Social Intelligence
Old psychological tests, like reading facial expressions or finding hidden emotions in static images, are not enough to show real theory of mind ability.
Tools like the MASC are a new step forward—tests based on real-life stories and situations that show how complex real life is. These methods let researchers see how someone deals with complex social talks rather than flat emotional codes.
In the future, researchers might use new tools like:
- Virtual reality interviews
- Active role-play games
- AI to study conversations
These changing tools could help find out not just who understands others well, but why—and what they do with that power.
Ethical and Clinical Impacts
For mental health professionals, these findings are both valuable and tricky.
On the good side:
- Clinicians might better spot people who are dangerous because they use cognitive empathy to control others.
- Therapists can make help specific for those who read feelings well but don't act ethically.
On the bad side:
- Treating such people is difficult. Clients who are insightful yet cold-hearted may know exactly how to pretend to get better.
- Moral problems come up when teaching these skills: Should we improve cognitive empathy in someone without kindness?
This highlights the limits of knowledge without humanity. Therapists must decide how to help without unintentionally making someone’s controlling tools sharper.
Recognizing the Limits
No study is perfect. Gillespie and Abu-Akel’s group was:
- Small (92 people)
- Mostly young adults
- Mostly female
And, psychopathy traits were self-reported, which has a natural bias. Future studies should deal with this by:
- Looking at people over time and across different ages
- Getting more varied groups of people, including those with clinical issues
- Looking at the biological and brain reasons
Until such big studies are completed, what we understand should stay careful—not seen as definite truth.
What This Means For You
Just because someone understands your emotions doesn’t mean they care about them.
If you find yourself consistently controlled or emotionally tired by someone who seems very good at understanding people, think about whether their empathy is planned, not real.
Ask yourself:
- Are they using their insights to help me feel better—or to control me?
- Do they offer support when I’m down—or use it for their own good?
Understanding the two sides of empathy can help you set stronger boundaries and protect your mental health.
Not All Mind-Readers Are Kind
The ability to read minds is not good by itself. Like any tool, if it's good or bad depends on how—and why—someone uses it.
In the hands of someone high in psychopathic meanness, mind-reading becomes a sharp tool for plans, not a bridge for connection.
It’s a frightening reminder: some people don’t just know what you're feeling—they know exactly how to twist it.
References
Gillespie, S. M., & Abu-Akel, A. M. (2025). Psychopathic meanness is associated with fewer over-mentalizing errors. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
Looking to learn more about empathy, social cognition, or theory of mind? Look at our other articles on human behavior and the brain.
