A brain study revealed that those with narcissistic traits experience empathy differently

It turned out that in such a person, the brain areas related to empathy are activated in different ways than in people with little narcissistic traits.

It is already known that it is important for a narcissist to make a good impression of himself. He wants to be admired and respected, and he is sensitive to negative feedback.

“We were interested in finding out how a person with a lot of narcissistic traits reacts when they see another person in a situation where they lose face”, doctoral researcher Matias Piispanen About Aalto University.

The study was published In the journal Cerebral Cortex.

Empathy experience has often been studied, for example, by showing photographs of a sad person. Now the matter was investigated for the first time in a socially complex situation imitating everyday life.

The research was based on a sociologist Erving Goffmanin The view of “face work” presented in the 1950s. According to Goffman, we strive to give a good impression of ourselves in an interaction situation.

For example, we want to appear competent. This makes us vulnerable at the same time, as others can either accept or reject the impression we give.

If we are not even considered competent, we lose face. Such a threat can cause embarrassment and anxiety not only in ourselves but also in those who follow the situation.

According to Goffman, people usually try to protect themselves and others from losing face.

To be investigated was searched for with an online survey measuring narcissistic personality traits, in which almost a thousand respondents participated. In the end, two groups were formed from the 58 respondents.

“Some had a lot of narcissistic traits and others only a few narcissistic traits. They themselves didn’t know which group they belonged to.”

The subjects were placed in an MRI machine. While there, the participants watched videos in which a person – actually an actor – told stories of being shut out or admired.

“One story dealt, for example, with a situation where he had not been invited to a party with a group of friends, even though all the other members of the group had received an invitation.”

Storytelling after, the narrator received feedback from another person threatening to lose face. Another person questioned the admiration or suggested that the exclusion was caused by the narrator himself.

Magnetic resonance imaging showed what was happening in the subjects’ brains.

There were differences between the groups in the areas of the brain that are related to the interpretation of social situations and empathy, i.e. the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings.

In those with low narcissistic traits, brain areas related to empathy were activated in a similar way. Those with a lot of narcissistic traits did not activate these brain areas in the same way.

“So they don’t necessarily react to another person’s suffering in the same way as other people.”

Differences According to Piispanen, they can be caused, for example, by the fact that narcissists make their own interpretations or pay attention to different things in a conversation than less narcissistic people.

“Perhaps they identified more with the giver of the feedback than with the recipient.”

The subjects filled out an empathy questionnaire before the study. It was also found that those with a lot of narcissistic traits had less tendencies to take the point of view of others into account.

So they don’t necessarily do the same kind of “face work” for others.

According to Piispanen, this can make it difficult to create a genuine connection and lead to difficulties and misunderstandings with other people.

Narcissism The face project involved researchers from the universities of Helsinki, Turku, Tampere and Oulu, among others.