What if the next frontier of human rights isn’t out in the streets but inside your own head?

Empathy is central to social cognition, yet efforts to link it with neurodiverse and clinical conditions have yielded contradictory findings, often reinforcing a deficit-focused narrative that conflicts with individuals’ experiences. While traditional models distinguish cognitive (understanding others’ emotions) from emotional empathy (being affected by others’ emotions), they often neglect how their interplay shapes individual outcomes. Addressing these limitations, this article focuses on the emerging concept of empathic disequilibrium, the intrapersonal imbalance between cognitive and emotional empathy. We synthesise current evidence linking empathic disequilibrium with individual differences in autistic traits and mental health, discuss its potential mechanisms, and propose a framework that recognises empathy as a multifaceted system with interacting components, with implications for advancing theory and practice across cognitive sciences.

The field of interoception research is growing at a rapid pace. This Perspective highlights why establishing both mechanistic insight and construct validity will be critical prerequisites for developi...

Money talks – and his essay denouncing ‘near-term emissions goals’ at Cop30 mostly argues the case for letting the ultra-rich off the hook

Traditional scientific publishing is a very lucrative business. For example, it has been reported that for-profit publishers (such as Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis) have pr…

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