<p>This study explored how the three psychopathy dimensions— Grandiose-Deceitful (GD), Callous-Unemotional (CU) and Impulsive-Need for Stimulation (INS)—are related to emotion recognition in a community sample of 345 children (52.2% male) aged 8 to 12 (<i>M</i> = 10.31 years). Participants viewed static facial images depicting basic emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and neutral) while accuracy, reaction time (RT), and attentional patterns (via eye-tracking) were recorded. Regarding the accuracy of emotion recognition, CU traits were the only psychopathic dimension significantly associated with poorer emotion recognition, specifically for fear and neutral expressions. For RT, no effects emerged for CU or INS, but higher GD traits were associated with faster responses, particularly for sadness. Gaze patterns varied robustly by emotion; however, no psychopathic trait significantly predicted fixation to the eyes or mouth, except for a marginal trend suggesting that higher GD levels were associated with reduced fixation to the mouth region for anger and fear. The introduction of conduct problems (CP) as a covariate did not alter the significant effects—though it diminished marginal ones—supporting the robustness of the associations between psychopathic traits and emotion-recognition outcomes. Findings underscore the importance of CU traits as the core trait in emotion recognition whilst highlight the value of considering all psychopathic dimensions, rather than focusing only on CU traits, to better understand emotional processing and inform tailored early prevention and intervention strategies.</p>