It’s a good thing you used the word “scale” because it’s the right metaphor to help understand the phenomena.
Someone could be VERY HIGHLY empathetic, but AS LONG as their need to appear fearless, tough, invincible or immune-to-bosses, is BIGGER (aka heavier — remember the scale metaphor), then the scale will tip in the direction of not wearing the mask.
As such, it’s a RELATIVE phenomena and not an absolute one.
With all of that said, in a statistical sense, those with these strong/rigid image management mandates (unconsciously) permeating their personality, TEND to be lower in emotional IQ, and so you are likely to see a correlation between low empathy and this mask-shunning, anti-social behavior.
But if you care about nuance and details, this is correlation, NOT causation. The causation is not unilaterally low empathy, it’s that the identity & image management drivers mentioned above, are more important to preservation of homeostasis in the psyche.
By this I mean, identity stabilization & management is more important (sorted higher in priority) than empathic concern or social-conformity.
Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to What are the benefits of seeking therapy?