Beware “malicious sympathizers”

Understanding these types of toxic personalities will help you protect yourself from them at work and anywhere else.
For most people, the term “mentally ill” suggests images of troubled criminals and madmen wielding axes. In fact, many of these people end up in prisons… but many others live a normal life!

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Here’s an example of a neuroscientist who was studying psychopathy and suddenly discovered at the age of 60 that his brain functions in a similar way to the brains of the criminals he was studying. Or what was reported by a study that found that entrepreneurs are three times more likely than others to suffer from mental illness.
> “Dark traits”: This clearly indicates that many psychopaths carry a pen rather than weapons, and spend their days in offices rather than in prisons and reformatories.
How does this make sense? Previous studies have shown that so-called “dark traits” such as lack of empathy, manipulativeness and narcissism, often associated with the term psychopath, express themselves in different ways. A recent study also discovered that there is a type of these patients that is difficult to spot, and that entrepreneurs and specialists in their fields may encounter without realizing the danger they are dealing with.
> ‘Malignant sympathizers’: It is not true that all psychopaths lack empathy. In the public imagination, psychopaths lack empathy; Either they don’t understand other people’s feelings or they simply don’t care, which makes them so dangerous. But new research by British psychologists shows that this is not always true. A research team from Nottingham Trent University studied the personalities of nearly 1,000 participants and discovered a subtype of toxic, unremarkable psychopaths: the dark empath.
In a recent report published by The Conversation, the researchers explained that this type achieved high results on the scales of “bad traits” and empathy. These malicious sympathizers do not use physical violence and do not frankly ignore the needs of others, but they do like others to pursue their own. In other words, their behavior is more malicious, less outright aggressive, but causes the same degree of destruction as other psychopaths.

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Dangerous aggressiveness: “Malignant sympathizers are not as aggressive as those from the traditional dark triad group, which may suggest that the latter two are more dangerous,” study co-authors Nadja Hem and Alexander Somic consider. But the latest study showed that malicious empaths are more aggressive than traditional psychopaths and those who have an uncanny talent for understanding the condition of others, at least on the scale of indirect aggressiveness… This means that they intentionally harm or manipulate people through social ostracism, a toxic sense of humor, and a sense of humor. feeling guilty”.
> Beware of malicious sympathizers at work: These seem to be some of the most hated types of people you may encounter in the workplace.
The researchers warn that “the danger of this type of personality lies in their empathy and the resulting social skills, which makes it difficult to detect their inner darkness. We think malicious sympathizers are ruthless and ruthless, but they are able not to display this kind of aggression.”
In short, they can be likened to shrewd politicians who always succeed in concealing their dirty machinations to get their way.
At the end of their report, the researchers stress the need for more research to fill in the gaps and knowledge of how psychopaths express their illness, but they draw a clear lesson: Beware of malicious empaths, and don’t allow someone’s good understanding of others’ feelings and motivations to blind you to the fact that they may be a hardened psychopath. .
Finally, knowledge of the existence of a malicious sympathizer class helps identify those with a dangerous mixture of deep empathy and a desire to get what they want at any cost.

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