Empathy and emotional intelligence impairments in non-clinical psychopathy

ABSTRACT Introduction: Empathy and emotional intelligence are great valued human characteristics which presence of those in individuals, and that absence in of psychopathologies, has attracted a major deal of research interest. The study of aversive personality traits has received great interest in the past decade, particularly the non-clinical traits of psychopathy. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the impairments of empathy and emotional intelligence in non-clinical psychopathy. Method: This study was cross-sectional. The population was the entire student of Allameh Tabataba'i University and university of Tehran. The sample was 565 students who were selected by multiple cluster sampling. The instruments utilized in this study included the questionnaires of emotional empathy scale, emotional intelligence scale and self reported psychopathy. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and stepwise regression. Results: Results showed that there was significant internal correlation among empathy, emotional intelligence impairments and non-clinical psychopathy (p<0.01). Also, stepwise regression analysis indicated that empathy and emotional intelligence impairments significantly predicted, respectively, 31% and 20% of the variance of non-clinical psychopathy (p<0.01). Conclusion: Empathy and emotional intelligence deficits can explain part of the variance in non-clinical psychopathy. In addition, will discuss the present study's theoretical and empirical implication. Key words: empathy, emotional intelligence, psychopathy, emotion processing