Inside the narcissistic brain: fMRI research sheds light on the narcissist’s struggle with empathy

Many people have narcissistic traits to some degree, for example, confidence in one’s own superiority, a sense of entitlement and a desire to be the centre of attention. However, some people present with notably higher narcissistic traits than others, and the neural basis of so-called ‘grandiose narcissism’ has rarely been studied in socially complex situations. 

In contrast, in brain areas associated with empathy, the activation of less narcissistic subjects was relatively similar across subjects, implying a more shared experience also at a neural level. The differences emerged in areas associated with interpreting social situations and with cognitive empathy. 

‘People with a high level of narcissistic traits may not necessarily build supportive or genuine connections with others, which can lead to difficulties and misunderstandings in interaction,’ says Piispanen. 

The study began with an online survey measuring narcissistic personality traits, completed by nearly a thousand respondents. From this pool, individuals with many narcissistic traits were invited to functional magnetic resonance imaging, and a control group consisted of those with few narcissistic traits. The final dataset included 58 participants.  

How does ‘losing face’ play out in the brain? 

The researchers focused on how similar or dissimilar brain activation is among participants in a real life-like scenario where another person faced a social threat. ​​According to sociologist Erving Goffman’s views from the 1950s, people try to present a certain image of themselves in social interactions​.​ ​Protecting this image from being undermined is commonly called ‘saving face’.​ This ​self-image is ​vulnerable because others can either accept or reject it, provoking anxiety or embarrassment not only in the person targeted but also in those observing the situation.  

Goffman argued that participants in interaction typically try together to protect both their own and each other’s face—that is, they engage in facework.  

During brain scanning, participants watched videos in which another person (a professional actor) told personal stories and received feedback on them. The stories involved situations from youth and adulthood in which the narrator had been excluded or admired. After the narratives, the narrator received feedback from another person that threatened their face. For example, the feedback might question whether the admiration the narrator received was deserved, or suggest that the exclusion was the narrator’s own fault. 

The study suggests that facework may differ between individuals with many versus few narcissistic traits. 

Previously, empathy has predominantly been studied using specific, controlled stimuli (such as emotional facial expressions) rather than more complex situations involving people telling stories or giving or receiving feedback. 

‘A real-life–like scenario is much more complex and requires more interpretation and evaluation of the situation,’ Piispanen explains. ‘In addition, participants were not specifically instructed to empathize with the narrator’s experience. This allowed us to observe how they spontaneously tracked and processed a complex social situation as it played out.’  

In addition to Aalto University, the Faces of Narcissism project included researchers from the Universities of Helsinki, Turku, Tampere and Oulu, among others. 

The research article was published on 27 October in the journal Cerebral Cortex.