When a person watches someone else being sharply criticized or ridiculed in front of them, in most people the brain activates areas that help them put themselves in the other person's place. A new neuroimaging study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex showed that in people with high levels of grandiose narcissism this joint brain activity is less pronounced. In other words, their brain responses to another person's social "blow" are less coordinated with one another.
Narcissism as a personality trait means excessive focus on oneself and reliance on social interactions to maintain one's own image. Psychologists distinguish vulnerable narcissism (insecurity and a strong need for approval) from grandiose narcissism - a sense of superiority, confidence in special rights and a striving for status and admiration. Both variants are linked to difficulties with empathy - the ability to respond to others' feelings (affective empathy) and to understand what they think or feel (cognitive empathy).
Researchers from Aalto University and the University of Helsinki (Finland) wanted to find out how narcissistic traits are related to brain response at the moment when someone's social image is being destroyed in front of others. The study involved 73 people who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - a method that tracks blood flow to brain regions and thereby neuronal activity. After exclusions due to excessive head movement, the analysis included 28 people with high grandiose narcissism and 30 with low; about 70% of the sample were women.
Participants watched videos in which an actor told personal stories, and then an "evaluator" gave feedback. In half of the cases he supported the storyteller, in the other half he sharply criticized him, calling his image into question. Participants were not asked to empathize specifically - they simply observed. After each clip they rated their emotions.
Analysis using inter-subject correlation - a statistical method that compares how synchronously brain activity changes in different people at the same moments - revealed differences. When watching the critical videos, people high in narcissism showed lower synchrony of brain responses than the low-narcissism group in five subregions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. After correction for multiple comparisons, two areas remained significant: the inferior portion of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior portion of the right posterior cingulate cortex. When watching the supportive videos, there were no such differences.
Contrary to the authors' expectations, no significant group differences were found in the anterior insula, which is associated with emotional response. A traditional analysis of activation strength at the sharpest moments of criticism also showed no significant differences in any of the three areas. That is, the effect manifested itself specifically in the consistency of responses over time, not in their intensity.
On the empathy questionnaire, participants high in narcissism reported lower scores on three of the four scales, including perspective taking (on average 11.4 versus 14.4) and compassion (13.0 versus 15.5).
The authors emphasize that this concerns a personality trait, not a clinical diagnosis of narcissistic disorder. Brain synchrony in itself is not a measure of empathy - lower consistency may reflect wandering attention, detachment or different ways of interpreting the scene. The study did not measure empathy or embarrassment directly at the moment of viewing, and the link to perspective taking relies on the typical functions of these areas, which are also involved in attention and thoughts about oneself. The sample was small, and the results cannot be generalized to vulnerable narcissism. Future work with larger and more diverse samples should directly measure social emotions in real time.