Menschen, die bei bestimmten psychopathischen Merkmalen höhere Werte erzielen, haben möglicherweise tatsächlich ein schärferes Verständnis für die Gedanken und Absichten anderer Menschen | Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass diese Form der Psychopathie mit einer klareren, aber emotional losgelösten Sicht auf die Gedanken anderer verbunden sein könnte.

From the article: People who score higher on certain psychopathic traits may actually have a sharper understanding of other people’s thoughts and intentions, according to new research [published](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2025.102054) in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. Specifically, adults who reported more callousness and lack of empathy—traits associated with psychopathic “meanness”—performed better on a test designed to assess how accurately someone can interpret social situations. The findings suggest that this form of psychopathy might be linked to a clearer but emotionally disengaged view of others’ minds.

Understanding how people think and feel about others’ mental states—a skill known as theory of mind—plays a central role in social life. It allows people to predict how others will behave, recognize emotions, and adjust their actions accordingly. This ability can promote kindness and cooperation. But it can also be misused. Individuals who are manipulative or exploitative may use their insight into others’ thoughts to take advantage of them.

This idea is relevant to psychopathy, a personality pattern that includes traits such as fearlessness, emotional coldness, impulsivity, and lack of guilt. While many studies have suggested that people with higher levels of psychopathic traits struggle to interpret emotions or intentions accurately, others have proposed the opposite. Some researchers have argued that certain psychopathic traits might be linked to an intact or even heightened ability to understand how others think—just without the emotional engagement that usually guides compassionate behavior.

Past studies have produced mixed findings. One reason for the confusion may be that many older studies used tests that didn’t clearly distinguish different types of mind-reading errors. For example, someone might misunderstand a social situation because they fail to grasp another person’s thoughts or feelings (known as under-mentalizing), or because they read too much into the situation and wrongly attribute motives (over-mentalizing). Without knowing which type of error is being made, it’s hard to draw conclusions about how psychopathic traits affect social understanding.

May support why politicians tend to have psychopathic traits. They are able to “read people” better and thus be able to manipulate fears and hopes towards political gain.

Do they understand others in general like in *“humans tend to think this in that situation“*? Or is it such, that they truly understand what a particular person is thinking at a current situation?

I ask, because I experienced (having a personality disorder myself and therefore a … let’s say quite atypical thought pattern) that others (narcissists for example, as I haven’t *knowingly* met a psychopath yet)) tried to manipulate me and failed abysmally. (Not all the time, as I am not immune to manipulation, but yet from time to time and maybe more often, than even they might have expected.)

So would a psychopath from the above study has understood me or would they rather has understood the general typical human reaction to whatever trigger?

^(If I may ask, that is to say.)

This skill is precisely how I identify and predict all my future victims‘ behavior. It also applies to police and other persons in authority (psychologists, psychiatrists, judges, prison guards, etc.) whose entire profession is to stop people like me from harming others. This skill has allowed me to manipulate the entire legal system and flourish economically at the expense of my victims.

So what is my profession?

I’m a lawyer.

This sounds like they’re rediscovering sociopaths. The harm „self soothing“ has caused to society and psychology as a profession is enormous.

It’s extremely well documented how important touch is to human health in general, so it’s still amazing to me that articles like [this](https://huckleberrycare.com/blog/ferber-method-for-sleep-training-what-age-to-start) continue to pop up all the time. I guess this is a good reminder that psychology, like CEO, has more than its fair share of pyschopaths who are attracted to the field.

Maybe for people with psycophatic traits AND above average intelligence. But then the sharper understanding might be explained by the higher iq and not by the psycopathic traits. Contrary to common sense, most people with antisocial traits have below average iq.

So yes, while the smart psycho might be good at reading emotions and manipulating others, being able to become something like a politician or a sucessful entrepeneur, the typical psycopath usually ends up on activities that do not require that skill, like thievery or drug dealing

Oh great, another advantage psychopaths can use against people. It bothers me that they can be so highly competent

The predator understands the prey.r