Talk about saving face.
Many of us possess some narcissistic personality traits, whether it’s a sense of entitlement, confidence in our own superiority or a desire to be the center of attention.
Narcissism doesn’t only mean talking about yourself or being vain, though, as a new study reveals a subtle clue some “grandiose” or overt narcissists give off.
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Cerebral Cortex, looked at empathy in “grandiose narcissists” by monitoring how their personality traits influenced brain activity during a life-like scenario where another person faced a social threat.
Participants watched videos in which someone told personal stories about being excluded or admired and received feedback that threatened the image the narrator was presenting.
The feedback questioned whether the admiration was deserved or whether the narrator was at fault for their own exclusion.
The brain activity of the narcissists showed reduced empathy towards the narrator experiencing embarrassment, whereas less narcissistic subjects shared in the narrator’s mortification.
The researchers based their study on a theory from sociologist Erving Goffman — that people try to present a certain image of themselves in social interactions.
Because others can accept or reject this self-image, causing anxiety or embarrassment for both the person projecting it and the observers, people protect that image from being undermined in a move called “saving face.”
Typically, anyone involved in the social interaction will work together to save each other’s faces, a practice called facework.
The study found that facework differed between those with more narcissistic traits and those with fewer.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the narcissistic brains were less in sync during the narrator’s embarrassment.
Areas of the brain associated with empathy showed less activity than in less narcissistic subjects, implying the latter had a shared experience with the narrator and engaged in cognitive empathy.
These findings suggest that “grandiose narcissists” may not build genuine connections or show support for others, leading to misunderstandings in social interactions.
“People with a high number of narcissistic traits respond to another person’s vulnerable experience differently than others,” lead study author Matias Piispanen said in a news release.
“They may attune to interaction in a different way, pay attention to different aspects of it or make different interpretations of what is happening,” Piispanen added.
The researchers used empathy to determine how the participants processed a complex social situation in the moment by having people tell stories or receive feedback.
“A real-life-like scenario is much more complex and requires more interpretation and evaluation of the situation,” Piispanen explained.
“In addition, participants were not specifically instructed to empathize with the narrator’s experience,” he added. “This allowed us to observe how they spontaneously tracked and processed a complex social situation as it played out.”
