Many of the various comments on M.E.'s blog posts have come to the issue of trust. It seems there is a majority which believe those of empathy are more trustworthy than those with less or a lack of empathy. When the topic of animals and relationships are discussed, many express that animals are easier to get along with and even love to an extent that might be more than they would a human being. On the one hand, we laud empathy for its squishy qualities. For those of a sociopathic bent, emotions aren't a natural phenomena in their own experience. However, they are quite adept at recognizing them and seem to take a keener interest in the mechanisms that go into how they work. They may lack a conscience and see emotions as a leverage to use in their activities toward making a life for themselves they like or prefer.
It may have been said and discussed (probably over and over) that both sides, empathy and sociopathy, isn't as easy as two sides to the same binary switch. It is also a dynamic of logic vs. illogic. Rational vs. irrational. Pragmatism vs. altruism. There seem to be no basis to believe there are any primary colors to the spectrum of human psychology.
From my standpoint, I wouldn't necessarily place more trust in someone with empathy than someone without it (or a limited degree). I trust logic. Emotions do have a sort of logic to them, I think. But, to me, emotions are about as predictable as the weather. You need to check the climate around you, but with some observation and inferrence, reasonable expectations can be extrapolated. Someone motivated outside of emotional impetus are more trustworthy, because you can approach the interaction with set influences and, by applying logic, you can have a much higher confidence in the results. If you deal with someone that doesn't base their relationship on emotion, but purely on measurable and understandable phenomena, then I'd choose that person to entrust with many things I'd never trust someone moved by empathy.
Of course, why wouldn't the person without empathy be able to lie or just change their mind? This, then, isn't an issue of empathy vs. nonempathy. There seems like a vast amount of assumptions to be made about the value of emotion. I just have trouble understanding the wonderfulness of capricious human feelings. My loyalty is quantifiable. You can be sure I will do what I say or that I think what I say I think. If you don't trust me, it's as simple as exploring the likelihood of a logical reason for doing so. I would undergo a similar period of time getting to know someone, whether empath or not, before I begin placing certain assumptions upon them.
I just don't understand how anyone would find this difficult to understand.