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An individual displays a high degree of attunement to the emotions of others, yet choose to be blunt or cruel.
An individual displays a high degree of attunement to the emotions of others, yet choose to be blunt or cruel.
Sharma, Hridya. “Exploration of the Psychological Underpinnings of Dark Empaths.” Psyche, Aug. 2024, vocal.media/psyche/exploration-of-the-psychological-underpinnings-of-dark-empaths.
The phrase "dark empath" seems to have its initial origin in psychology circles, as a way to describe people who displayed high levels of cognitive empathy (the ability to understand what people are feeling) while displaying what are referred to as "dark traits", such as narcissism and psychopathy (Brenner 2020).
While initially used as a negative term in psychology spheres, the term then made its way onto the social media platform TikTok and became incorporated in a niche genre of video on that website that seems to chronicle a kind of long, generational battle between "empaths" (people with high degrees of empathy) and "narcissists" (people who are self centered and don't care about the feelings of others), with the dark empath finally being the ones to unseat narcissists from their apparent victory over the empaths who were too kind and empathetic to give them a piece of their mind.
These videos are generally characterized by some sort of archetypal narcissist (whether it's just someone self centered or someone with an actual personality disorder tends to vary from video to video) being detected by the dark empath and put in their place.
Sharma, Hridya. “Exploration of the Psychological Underpinnings of Dark Empaths.” Psyche, Aug. 2024, vocal.media/psyche/exploration-of-the-psychological-underpinnings-of-dark-empaths.
Sources:
Brenner, Grant Hillary. “Introducing the Dark Empath.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 1 Aug. 2020, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202008/introducing-the-dark-empath-0.
Brinley Morris is a year 2 SCC student with hopes of transferring to UC Davis to pursue a degree in Paleontology, the study of extinct life.
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