Riddle: How many narcissists does it take to change a lightbulb? (Answer at the end.)
Loki, the shrewd villain in the Marvel Universe, was gifted with a scepter that acted as a mind control device, allowing him to influence others’ thoughts to serve his own interests. Unbeknownst to him, though, it secretly backfires, influencing his own mind by continuously fueling his hatred of his brother Thor and of all the inhabitants of Earth. It even contaminates the memories of his childhood:
Thor: We were raised together, we played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?
Loki: I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss, I who was and should be king!”
Fulfilling agentic goals as their main drive in life is the hallmark of dark personalities, yet to achieve that, they will inevitably cross paths with other minds and their conflicting desires. Accurately deciphering and being able to manipulate them accordingly would offer a high competitive advantage. However, there is a widespread intuition that high dark trait personalities are so blinded by their own intentions that they are unable to read other minds, being left “in the dark” about them.
For instance, remaining in the realms of superheroes and villains, when confronted with compelling evidence that Clark Kent is actually Superman, Lex Luthor cannot accept it, because:
“I know better! I know that no man with the power of Superman would ever pretend to be a mere human! Such power is to be constantly exploited! Such power is to be used!”
The inability to distance themselves from their own perspectives and goals impairs the ability to understand other motivations, and over time, this can lead to an increasing alienation from other minds. But is it truly an inability? What if they really intended to understand what the others think and feel and would dedicate efforts to it? Psychological research only to some degree supports the anticipated core deficit in understanding the minds of others for dark personalities.
We have already discussed the problem with reading other minds for people with high social anxiety (see here) as being one of orientation. More specifically, the socially anxious individual projects the way they perceive reality (via looking inwardly) upon the way in which all other minds would interpret it. This brings safety and predictability at the expense of accuracy. A similar solipsistic, self-referential bias is documented in the case of high dark trait personalities, though modulated by the various motivations (and especially lack thereof) that determine them to relate to other minds (or ignore them). Part 1 of this series will deal with research on social cognition in individuals with high narcissistic traits, while the next post(s) will refer to the influences of other aversive traits such as psychopathy, Machiavellianism, or sadism.
Narcissism is considered the most benign of the aversive traits in terms of antisocial behaviors—in fact, our study in prisoners showed that it was one of the few dark factor dimensions which didn’t predict criminal behavior (unlike sadism or deceitfulness). However, in its chronic or pathological forms, it can have devastating interpersonal consequences resulting in instances of aggression, narcissistic rage, idealization, devaluation and excessive control or vindictiveness, often experienced by the others as forms of abuse.
For individuals with high narcissism, a vast arsenal of intra- and inter-personal strategies is deployed to maintain positive self-views and reinforce high self-esteem. This is translated into multiple cognitive biases (see here for an excellent summary), ranging from perceptual (less holistic, more analytical and focused perception), attentional (biases toward positive cues, especially self-referential), to memory (better at encoding and remembering positive self-relevant information, but also their negative communal experiences—for example, being rude—which suggests they might be self-aware about their lack of communal values and about their transgressions).
In an interesting study, Miranda Giacomin and collaborators (2018) asked participants to listen to an online lecture while knowing they would be later tested about the contents in a setup where they could view the lecturer and their own video image at the same time. The poorer memory of individuals with high narcissism (and not of those with low narcissism) was directly mediated by their excessive self-focus, meaning that the more they looked at themselves during the lecture delivery, the less they remembered of its contents.
Therefore, a preferential orientation towards the self creates various distortions in perceiving, interpreting, and remembering information about others. However, this could be further nuanced according to the various subtypes of narcissism.
For instance, some studies suggest that only vulnerable narcissists have deficits in theory of mind and empathy, whereas individuals high in grandiose narcissism can perform equally well on tasks assessing theory of mind, emotional intelligence, and empathy. Both agentic and antagonistic narcissism predicted lower actual socioemotional cognitive performance, yet only the antagonistic group (accurately) perceived their performance to be lower, while the agentic narcissists constantly self-enhanced their perceptions of socio-emotional performance (Mota et al., 2019). Finally, a distinct subtype of narcissism, considered “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”—communal narcissism, is characterized by similar global self-evaluations of exceptional self-importance, entitlement, and social power—but this time in the realm of their community, perceiving themselves as “saints” or moral saviors. However, to our knowledge, we have no objective measure of theory of mind in communal narcissists, which would be an interesting research avenue to pursue, given their specific motivation to engage with others.
Narcissism Essential Reads
Moreover, different types of social cognition could be differentially disrupted in the case of narcissism: Cognitive empathy (perspective taking, measured with the famous Reading the Mind in the Eyes task) appears unlikely to be impaired, while affective empathy (relating to another’s emotional state) is more disrupted (see here for a recent systematic review). This supports the view that, rather than a true inability, it might be a lack of motivation towards being emotionally attuned to other minds.
Interestingly, there is also some evidence of hyper-mentalizing (excessively focusing on the minds of others), associated with sensitivity to rejection, jealousy, and paranoia (similar to what we noticed in the case of social anxiety) associated with narcissism that remains under-explored. When the self is threatened (by rejection or competition), it might engage in recursive loops of (often erroneously) processing information about others in the attempt to salvage the positive self-image and deflect blame.
What can be done to address these deficits in ability and/or motivation? Changing some of the negative interpersonal behaviors associated with narcissism may require correcting the self‐related cognitive biases underlying people’s narcissistic tendencies. This can be temporarily achieved via altering their motivation: for instance, it was shown that high narcissists can exhibit empathy toward a distressed other when they are explicitly encouraged (thus motivated) to take that person’s perspective. However, direct attempts to increase affective empathy are unlikely to be successful unless we address underlying difficulties with their self-serving perceptions, or vulnerabilities in self-esteem. Without that, the developmentally reinforced cycle of self-serving social cognitive strategies cannot be broken to incorporate a genuine concern about otherness, away from the abyss that Loki mentioned, in which the self is deeply immersed.
Answer to the riddle: Just one. All they have to do is hold it in place while the world revolves around them.
