Investigating the Effects of Psychopathic and Empathic Traits on Interpersonal Resonance Over Time

Empathy is the cornerstone of many forms of human relationships and is a core skill for building meaningful connection between one another. A growing interest in empathy from psychology researchers over the last few decades has seen vast pool of literature surrounding empathy come to be. The same could also be said for psychopathic personality traits. Very little research has enquired about the role of psychopathy on how people resonate with each other at an interpersonal level, with consideration of empathy, interpersonal closeness, and synchronous physiological responding. This study aims to investigate how psychopathic personality traits and cognitive empathy influence interpersonal resonance between two people over a period of time. 106 participants (53 dyads) had their physiological responding recorded, as well as their interpersonal closeness with their partner reported during the study. Participants had their psychopathic personality traits and cognitive empathy levels rated also. Physiological synchrony values were obtained, as well as values representing self-reported interpersonal closeness, as measures of interpersonal resonance. These were then analysed using linear mixed models to determine the effect of psychopathic and empathic traits on these measures of interpersonal resonance. Results showed no significant relationship between any of the three measures of interpersonal resonance used in this study. Though the core results as well as some exploratory visualisations did provide many paths for future research in this area.