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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Personality Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1546917

Cold Hearts and Dark Minds: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Empathy Across Dark Triad Personalities

Provisionally accepted
Meenakshi Shukla Meenakshi Shukla 1*Niti Upadhyay Niti Upadhyay 2
  • 1 Department of Psychology, Allahabad University, Allahabad, India
  • 2 Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This systematic review and meta-analysis explored cognitive and affective empathy differences across Dark Triad traits-Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. Registered on PROSPERO and following PRISMA guidelines, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, ProQuest, and Google Scholar were searched for studies until June 2024. Risk of bias was evaluated using Egger's test and Rank correlation test, along with risk-of-bias plots (Robvis) for quality assessment. Fourteen studies (N = 5,328) met inclusion criteria. Meta-analysis showed Narcissism was negatively associated with affective empathy (r= -.134, p<.05) but not significantly linked to cognitive empathy (r= .061, p= .215), while Machiavellianism had a significant negative correlation with both cognitive (r= -.089, p<.05) and affective empathy (r= -.291, p<.0001). Psychopathy demonstrated the strongest negative association with affective empathy (r= -.347, p<.0001). Moderate-to-high heterogeneity was found across all analyses (I² range: 40.56% -94.03%). This review underscores differential empathy profiles across Dark Triad traits, with significant affective empathy deficits in Psychopathy and Machiavellianism and the complex role of cognitive empathy in Narcissism and Machiavellianism. Further research should examine situational and subtype-specific factors influencing empathy in Dark Triad traits to enhance theoretical understanding and inform interventions.

    Keywords: Empathy, cognitive, affective, Dark triad, Systematic review, Meta-analysis, narcissism, Machiavellianism

    Received: 17 Dec 2024; Accepted: 05 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Shukla and Upadhyay. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Meenakshi Shukla, Department of Psychology, Allahabad University, Allahabad, India

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.