Social Cognition is a broad concept which incorporates understanding the intentions, beliefs, emotions, and mental states of others i.e., affective theory of mind, while also considering social interaction, social context, and social decision-making i.e., cognitive theory of mind (Alcalá-López et al., 2019). Social cognition is a distinct cognitive concept much like memory, language, and attention with individual differences in a persons' potential ability level and tendency to use these skills. Attentional dysfunction and deficits in understanding the emotional cues of others may partially explain aggression and anti-social behaviour seen in humans, and certain personality traits are also known to negative correlate with social cognition (Edalati et al., 2016). This may be due to a reduced capacity for emotional empathy, even though cognitive empathy may be intact e.g., little remorse or feeling for a negative action, even though it is known to be the wrong thing to do, or not socially acceptable. There have been suggestions within the literature that a deficiency in the ability to understand other people's mental states may be related to antisocial behaviour, aggressive behaviour, and/or psychopathy (Richell et al., 2003). People with higher rates of psychopathic traits are reported to show less empathy, and reduced preference towards both humans and animals compared to individuals low in psychopathic traits (Carroll et al., 2020). Psychopathy is characterised by callousness, manipulative behaviour, superficial charm, shallow affects, irresponsibility, lack of remorse, and antisocial behaviour (Hare et al., 1991). Psychopathy is a multidimensional construct, with several proposed factor structures. However, the two-factor conceptualisation, i.e., Primary and Secondary psychopathy, remains the most widely accepted within the literature (see Sellbom and Drislane, 2020 for more). Primary psychopathy has been thought to constitute the core features of psychopathy, including emotional detachment, shallow affect, and failure to form deep relationships while Secondary psychopathy is strongly related to antisocial lifestyle, impulsiveness, and emotional disturbance (Takamatsu and Takai, 2019).

There have been mixed findings within the literature regarding the association between psychopathy and measures of social cognition. Some researchers propose that psychopathy is associated with deficits in the ability to recognise and interpret the emotional state of others (e.g., Blair, 2006, 2019; Blair et al., 2006; Blair and Zhang, 2020). However, others argue that individuals with psychopathic traits have a similar, or even enhanced ability to perceive the emotions of others, in comparison to the general population (e.g., Wheeler et al., 2009; Book et al., 2013). It has also been suggested an enhanced ability to take the perspective of others may allow individuals with elevated psychopathic traits to detect and subsequently manipulate vulnerable individuals. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) is a measure of affective ToM and has been used to assess associations between psychopathy and the social cognitive process referred to as affective theory of mind or mentalising (Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010). While some authors have found a negative association between psychopathic traits and RMET scores (e.g., Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010; Sandvik et al., 2014), others have found no such association (e.g., Richell et al., 2003).

These mixed findings may be due to variation in the population under examination (e.g., forensic, student or community sample), the gender breakdown of the participants (e.g., all male, all female, mostly female), the type of test administered (self-report or clinical assessment), and the way in which psychopathy was conceptualised (e.g., single construct, two-factor or three-factor). In addition, the sample size used was often relatively small. For example, Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic (2010) sampled 112 undergraduates, 92 of which were female. As such, more research is needed using a larger sample size to consider the relationship between social cognition and psychopathic traits within a homogeneous community sample. Consequently, the aim of this study was to assess associations between self-report psychopathy and RMET scores with a large community sample of males. Male participants were recruited because men are more likely to have social cognition disorders and typically display higher levels of psychopathy than females (Zilioli et al., 2015; Lobbestael et al., 2020). A second aim was to investigate the relationship between recently developed RMET Short Forms A and B (Burke et al., 2020), and a well-validated measure of primary and secondary psychopathic traits (Levenson et al., 1995), as well as cross-validate the short forms of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test to the full measure. Based on the literature in relation to social cognition and psychopathy in a community sample, we hypothesise that participants with higher levels of self-reported psychopathy will perform lower on the RMET. We further hypothesise that this pattern of scoring should be similar across the short-forms of the RMET, inclusive of the direction of the association.

Participants in this study had a wide age range (18–78 years) with an average of 37.44 ± 13.99 as reported in Table 1 alongside the outcome data. The majority of participants were engaged in gainful employment (64.8%) or a student (19.4%).

An aspect of affective social cognition (mentalising) was considered for this study, which investigated whether a non-clinical community-based sample of males self-reported higher or lower psychopathic traits following stratification into a high performing group (upper 25%; n = 250) or low performing group (lower 25%; n = 250), on a measure of affective theory of mind. We hypothesised, in line with the literature, that a lower ability to understand other people's mental states would be observed in those who presented with higher ‘levels of psychopathic traits' (Richell et al., 2003; Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010). A further aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between primary and secondary psychopathic traits and social cognitive outcomes, as well as the relationship between self-reported psychopathy and The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test Short Form (A and B), in a community sample of males. Our study sample was representative of the community in terms of age (range 18–78), and in terms of normal distribution of outcome scores.

Considering the RMET Short Forms (A and B) from a psychometric perspective, this study reports external validation psychometrics for the RMET-A and RMET-B individually, showing good reliability and an overall medium level of difficulty with a large community-based cohort. The main findings of this study confirm the negative relationship between performance on a measure of social cognition (mentalising) and both primary and secondary psychopathic traits, which was observed for the total RMET test, as well as the individual short forms. Our data is consistent with the literature in showing that decreased performance on measures of social cognition is associated with high self-reported traits of both primary and secondary psychopathy (Richell et al., 2003; Takamatsu and Takai, 2019). To further contextualise this relationship, participants who performed in the upper quartile on the RMET showed no significant relationship to self-report psychopathy scales nor did the middle cohort (n = 500). As shown in Figure 1, the interaction effect between the RMET and psychopathic trait subscale trend reported in Table 2, is driven by the performance and self-report of the lower quartile. By recruiting a homogeneous large community-based sample (N = 1,000 males), our quartile-based analysis was conduct with robust power and size, with each quartile larger than the total sample of other studies (e.g., Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010; N = 112; 82% Female).

A strength of this study is the large sample, and the inclusion of the RMET Short Forms for validation. A limitation of this study is the reliance on a self-report measure of psychopathy, rather than clinical interview or cohort, though small to moderate associations have been identified between the LSRPS and validated tools e.g., Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Brinkley et al., 2001). A further potential limitation is the specific recruitment of males. However, psychopathy is more frequently seen in males than females and the use of a male-only sample avoided potential floor effects (Lobbestael et al., 2020). Indeed, Muris et al. (2017) suggest that of all Dark Triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy), psychopathy is particularly pronounced in males compared to females. It is acknowledged that these findings cannot be generalised to females. This research further supports the use of the RMET-A and RMET-B in clinical research settings, or with people with high levels of subclinical psychopathic traits.

Our data suggests that there is a significant relationship between social cognitive function and self-reported traits of psychopathy, given the difference in significant associations between the measures depending on whether participants were within the upper or lower quartile for the RMET-36. Due to the cross-sectional survey based nature of this study, a causal hypothesis between poor social cognition and elevated psychopathic traits cannot be examined, though this may be an avenue for future research.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by The Queens University Belfast Research Ethics Committee (REC REF: EPS 20_32). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

GC contributed to the data collection. TB contributed to the statistical analysis. All authors contributed to the design and development of the study, as well as writing and reviewing the manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.