What Social Neuroscience Says About Narcissism

Living with, relying on, or even just spending time with someone who has a narcissistic personality style can be both emotionally and physically exhausting. People who have this personality style think only about themselves, engage in behaviors that can only be described as “intensely selfish,” and show no concern or empathy for what their behaviors do to other people. What can make it worse is that this lack of concern does not even suggest the person is trying to hurt someone. In order to want to hurt someone, you have to notice at least what impact what you do has on the other person. This is not something narcissistic people do very much.

When discussing narcissism, it is useful to keep in mind that there are actually two types. One type is called “grandiose narcissism,” where the person shows a very strong sense of self-importance, a need to be admired, and arrogance. There is a second type of narcissism called “vulnerable narcissism,” where the person tends to be avoidant, defensive, and anxious. Although vulnerable narcissism sounds different from grandiose narcissism, the two often look similar. People with both types of narcissism come across as very arrogant, focused on their own self-importance, and strongly entitled. Neuroscience provides some new insights into how they are different.

When considering narcissism from a social neuroscience perspective, it is important to recognize that all animals, human and nonhuman, are motivated by a need for social dominance. We all want to feel like we are in our highest place possible on the social hierarchy. In the animal world, this is a necessity because being in the highest place possible is essential for getting things needed for survival (including food and shelter). Humans are better able to manage not having a high place on the social hierarchy due to social networks for humans being much more flexible and complex than those for nonhumans, but we are still driven by a drive to feel we are as high as possible on the social dominance ranking.

Technicalities about the social neuroscience associated with narcissism are summarized in two recent articles written on the social neuroscience of narcissism (Jauk & Kanske, 2021; Schmidt, Pfarr, Meller, Evermann & Nenadić, 2023). In animals the areas most associated with a need for social dominance and reaching as high a place as possible on the social hierarchy are called the “prefrontal cortex” areas. When it comes to humans, this area is associated with how we see ourselves (our “self-identity”), which is part of the internal way we process important aspects of our lives (called “internally directed cognition”). Nonhuman animals have internally driven cognition as well, but theirs is much different, and, as a result, they cannot be said to have “narcissism” in the same ways humans do. What research on narcissism in humans shows is that there are stronger connections between prefrontal cortex areas and two other areas of the brain. For grandiose narcissism, there is a stronger connection than typical for an area called the “anterior thalamus,” and for vulnerable narcissism, there is a stronger connection with an area called the “cingulate” (more specifically called the “left anterior” and “right anterior” cingulate).

We tend to think of narcissism as the lack of something (e.g., lack of empathy, lack of caring), but neuroscience shows it may be better explained in terms of being too much of something. Both types of narcissism are associated with the individual feeling some sort of threat to how they see themselves, and this could particularly be explained by its strong connection with parts of the brain that emphasize the importance of social dominance. Grandiose narcissism, with its stronger association with the thalamus, can be seen as possibly more of an emotional reaction where intense feelings of emotion occur directly whenever the person perceives a threat to how they see themselves. Vulnerable narcissism, with its stronger association with the cingular areas, also has an emotional component, but it may be emotions (particularly rage, anger, and shame) that come about as the person cognitively processes that they perceive a negative view of how they appear and where they are on the social hierarchy.

Notice what this information shows about how narcissism might be effectively treated. Patients being treated for narcissism will very often only be responsive to treatment based on the problems they are told they caused, regardless of whether they do or do not recognize the problems on their own. Rather than teaching skills to replace missing skills, neuroscience would suggest that the best way of addressing narcissism is to help the person deal differently and more effectively with situations causing increased emotional distress. Research suggests that narcissistic personality traits come about from the problematic ways the person perceives and responds emotionally to situations. Helping the person become familiar and accepting of alternative ways of responding to situations where the person feels threatened in how they view themselves is possibly one way of helping to lessen how often the person responds to social situations in narcissistic ways. Approaches like these are often used in cognitive-behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and mindfulness therapy.