# Dark empaths in the workplace

- **Episode:** [150](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/150.md) (2024-12-03)
- **Type:** news-roundup
- **Tags:** dark-empaths, workplace-psychology, toxic-behavior
- **Time:** 1:50–5:38 (start 110s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/150?t=110](https://truthliesandwork.com/150?t=110)

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[1:50] Leanne Elliott: Dark empaths
[1:51] Al Elliott: Right. That sounds a bit weird. Go on
[1:54] Leanne Elliott: Dark empaths. Yeah, um, I'd not heard this term before. Um, thought it was— it was— it certainly grabbed my attention. Um, interesting article from BBC Science Focus. I can't imagine that's one that you're subscribed to, Al, but I am. Um, see, it's an article written by Dr. Nadja Haim and Dr. Emmanuel Fino about a new group of people that psychologists have discovered and coined dark empaths. So basically, these people have dark personality traits such as psychopathy and narcissism, but also above average levels of empathy, making them particularly complex and potentially dangerous. So you will probably remember from our episode on psychopathy that dark side personality traits are much more common than you think, about 1 in 100 people are psychopathic, and research actually suggests that dark empaths are actually about 20% of the population
[2:48] Al Elliott: That's quite a lot
[2:50] Leanne Elliott: It's a lot more common, which means if you've got a team of like 60 people, then you've got about 12 people on your team that are dark empaths. Why does this matter? Well, the thing is, you'll remember psychopathy typically is defined by people lacking empathy
[3:03] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm
[3:04] Leanne Elliott: A dark empath is somebody who has the traditional dark personality traits like manipulation or narcissism, but the high levels of empathy, but not necessarily empathy as we know it, because what it basically means is that they use empathy to connect, rather than to connect and support, to control and manipulate. So imagine somebody who knows exactly how you feel, but uses that understanding to steer things their way
[3:29] Al Elliott: Definitely met some of those people
[3:30] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, so in the workplace, this might look like somebody who takes credit for your ideas while making you feel like they're doing you a favor. They might navigate office politics really, really well, always position themselves as indispensable, and quietly undermine you and other people on the team. And it's not just about these big dramatic acts of deception. It's often the small calculated moves that can be just as harmful. And this does tie back to an earlier episode, um, as I said, where we talked about psychopathy and particularly in the workplace. Not all psychopaths are criminal masterminds or high-powered CEOs, despite what pop culture might have us believe. But the presence of people with dark traits, including dark empaths, can still create significant challenges in a professional environment because there's a lot more of them. But then of course you're going to have dark empaths in management positions as well, and I think they're the ones that I've come across, the managers that, um, yeah, claim all the credit, everything was their idea, all the performance is down to them, um, and yeah, really it was the rest of the team that was making them look good
[4:38] Al Elliott: Yeah, and also it kind of makes sense to me that a dark empath would traditionally be a manager because if they are good at navigating politics, if they are heartless about taking credit for something, And they also know how to manipulate people to get them to know what they, you know, get them to do what you want. That's like the perfect way to get into management. It's not the perfect manager, which Leanne will talk about on a note. Well, she talked about every episode basically, but it's not the perfect manager, but it's a perfect way to do it. So I can see also dark empaths being, um, a larger percentage being managers, um, or a large percentage of managers being dark empaths. Uh, politicians, I can see a lot. And potentially also, um, people sort of like, um, you know, like the Taylor Swifts of the world or the superstars. I don't know. I mean, maybe not Taylor Swift, maybe not. Taylor's always getting Beef, isn't she? I was just trying to think of someone big, so all right, there we go. Um, what about, uh, uh, your man who was married to Kim Kardashian and then he went—
[5:29] Leanne Elliott: Kanye West
[5:30] Al Elliott: Yes, probably a dark empath
[5:32] Leanne Elliott: There's more going on there than dark empath, to be fair. Um, interesting psychology to that man. What have you seen this week?