| Summary: | The triarchic model of psychopathy organizes characteristics associated with psychopathy in 3-dimensional personality traits: boldness (interpersonal), disinhibition (behavioral), and meanness (affective), thus considering it a multidimensional condition. These traits can be parallel to grandiose-manipulative, callous-unemotional, and impulsive-irresponsible tendencies in the youth population. Relatively to empathy, it has been linked both to psychopathic traits and to interoception processing. However, only a few studies consider these relations through a triarchic model vision. Therefore, the major aim of the present study was to explore the role of interoception as an underlying mechanism to the empathy deficits associated with the phenotypic traits of psychopathy, in a sample of community adolescents. The secondary objective was to explore the relation between psychopathy phenotypes (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition), empathy domains (affective and cognitive), and interoceptive accuracy while controlling for alexithymia. The results show: psychopathy dimensions were differentially associated with empathy domains, with cognitive empathy negatively associated with the behavioral dimension of psychopathy, while the affective dimension of psychopathy was negatively associated with both empathy domains; relation between the affective and behavioral dimensions of psychopathy and interoceptive accuracy, which disappeared, when controlling for alexithymia; a relation between cognitive empathy and interoceptive accuracy.
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