The Empath Construct: Exploring Conceptual Definition and the Presence of Cluster B Traits

A variety of social media postings, across multiple platforms, have presented the syndrome or identity construct they call the empath (Firestone, 2017; Kznaric, 2012). It refers to a group of people that reportedly feel more empathy than others and/or are more capable of reading the emotions of others in absence of other cues. However, there is no scientific data to support the concept. Despite this lack of evidence, it is widely accepted throughout American internet culture (Orloff, 2016, 2017; Partiali, 2019). Because of the lack of empirical support for the empath construct, whether or not this is a distinct ability or set of characteristics, and whether or not those who identify this way have any of the reported special abilities are questions worthy of careful investigation. The current study examined how self- identified empaths self-reported having specific characteristics purportedly associated with “being” an empath, and examined whether these self-identified empaths, and the subset who endorsed our criteria, had evidence of DSM personality disorders, with a focus on two of the cluster B personality disorders, borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. First, 155 participants who identified themselves as empaths responded to our newly created Empath Self-Identification Inventory to separate the overall test population into the high empath group and the low empath group (those who identified as empaths, but endorsed fewer of the statements in the Empath Self-Identification inventory). All participants then completed standardized measures for personality disorders. Results showed that the high empath group scored higher on the Mclean Screening instrument, measuring borderline personality traits, than the self-identified empaths that did not endorse as many characteristics on the initial screening. The high empaths were more likely to exceed the cutoff for clinical diagnosis; however, they did not report more overall borderline personality traits on the PDQ-4, a measure of all 10 DSM personality disorders. Additionally, the high empath group reported more overall pathological narcissism than low empaths on the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI); they also reported significantly more vulnerable narcissistic traits than low empaths. However, low empaths scored significantly higher in grandiose traits than the high empath group. The high empath group did not score significantly higher in clinical levels of narcissistic p