If I may give a personal answer to the question, as an autistic (high functioning/genius) who was born to and grew up with psychopathy?
There are different types of empathy, and the two main are cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. I do not have cognitive empathy. If you want me to know what you are thinking, you will need to tell me for I will not assume and rarely will I ask, because I learned long ago (from my P upbringing) to fear asking personal questions like that. Also, most people who think they can interpret what someone is thinking just from facial expressions and body language are simply flat out wrong most of the time. On the other hand, I, like many autistics, are regularly overwhelmed with very strong emotions and we often feel the emotions of others, like genuine empaths. Showing our strong emotions is rarely seen as acceptable, plus they are so strong, we usually learn to suppress them just in order to function. Worse, our emotions are so strong we don't even know, usually, wth they are about. It takes a lot of time to figure it out. Mostly, we shut down or melt down. So, we do not lack true empathy, but our social skills are poor due to brain disability in the social sector, so we don't act like we have empathy. (And people don't tell us what we need to know, so we are painfully slow to develop social skills.) We tend to be extremely logical, too, so we don't see things that are normal (like death and accidents and illness) as the horrible traumas that others do. As kids, yes, but rarely as adults. Every living thing is going to die. Accidents happen. Some live longer than others. Some lives are cut short. It is better to simply deal effectively with these things. That's not psychopathy, but grounded sanity.
People who "see with their heart", seem to be the only kind of people who see and get us and don't fear us. Those that don't see with their heart, tend to traumatize us by making false accusations, false assumptions, being chronically negative, and even abusive. It hurts, terribly.
Having clarified the best that I can, I too-frequently fear having traits of the P, because statistics (thus far) suggest that it's inheritable around 50% - as is autism, although I don't think the percentage is known. However, despite outward behaviors that might appear problematic or narcissistic or similar, internally my moral compass is stronger and more active than most people's (many autistics are well known to be truthful, to a fault, as am I,) ... sadly for us, because we are really hurt even by people with "normal" consciences. We actually "see" how easy it would be for the world to create "heaven on Earth" and don't understand why people refuse to choose right action to make it happen. ie. Benevolence with cooperation with collaboration; it's not rocket science as they say. It's not too hard for all humans to agree on some basic, core values and work together to live it. Anyway, as a child growing up in a P family, I used to joke that my anti-social personality-disordered older brother was born without any conscience, and I somehow ended up with both his and mine, or with a double-conscience. (There is legit science that understands that this is a direct result of trauma during gestation; some babies are born hyper-moral and others hyper a-moral, and the evidence is in the brain channel where damage can be recorded, but they can't figure out why one baby goes one way and another goes the other way. Maybe some day they will figure it out. Better yet, maybe some day people will end conception-, gestation-, and early-childhood-traumas so that people's brains develop healthily.) The good news is that no matter how emotional I get, in either direction, I cannot do harm to another - ever. So, it really hurts my feelings when people say they are afraid of me - and they do, too often. It even hurts my feelings when people say they are afraid of autistics, in general, and the police don't seem to hesitate to accuse or shoot us, as well. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I ever did harm to another or an animal or any living thing, and I get visibly upset when people think I could or would.(False accusations are a nightmare for emotionally abused autistics.) I don't know if this is true for most autistic adults, but it seems to be. Usually, the only people saying bad things about us are people who are not us. Want to know what an autistic thinks and believes? Ask them. Be specific, though, because general questions are too encompassing and we have a tendency to want to be both thorough and accurate. So, forthright specificity is a kindness to us. But if you do ask us, be prepared for a thorough response.
