A new neuroimaging study published in Cerebral Cortex finds that individuals with high grandiose narcissism show reduced synchrony in their brain activity when witnessing someone else endure harsh, embarrassing criticism. The research, part of the Facing Narcissism project between Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, used realistic, time‑matched stimuli to examine how narcissistic traits shape neural responses in socially threatening situations.
Narcissism is a personality trait marked by an excessive focus on the self and an drive to bolster one’s social standing. The study notes two forms: vulnerable narcissism, characterised by insecurity and a strong need for approval, and grandiose narcissism, defined by feelings of superiority and entitlement. Both forms are linked with difficulties in empathy, which encompasses both the ability to share others’ emotions (affective empathy) and to understand what another person is thinking or feeling (cognitive empathy).
Previous research has offered mixed findings on whether highly narcissistic individuals lack the ability to understand others or simply lack motivation to care. A 2020 meta‑analysis found that those high in grandiose narcissism reported lower levels of both affective and cognitive empathy on questionnaires, but did not perform worse on behavioural tasks that required understanding others’ thoughts; the shortfall appeared mainly in affective empathy. The new study interprets this as suggesting grandiose narcissists may be able to take another’s perspective but are less motivated to do so.
In contrast, physiological and brain‑imaging studies have shown heightened sensitivity when a person’s social standing is challenged. For instance, an earlier brain‑imaging study linked social rejection to increased activity in networks processing social pain, particularly among those with higher narcissism scores. A separate 2023 study reported amplified activity in facial muscles associated with anger and frustration when grandiose narcissists received negative evaluation, even if they did not report feeling more upset on questionnaires.
When the distress is experienced by someone else, the neural picture shifts. A 2024 neuroimaging study found that grandiose narcissism was associated with muted activity in emotion‑related brain regions during moments of compassion, though the researchers note that real life social interactions often lack explicit instructions to empathise.
Participants in the current study were recruited as part of the Facing Narcissism project. Lead author Matias Piispanen, a doctoral researcher at Aalto University’s Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering and the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Social Sciences, explained the aim: “Individuals with strong narcissistic traits tend to place great importance on maintaining a positive self‑image and are sensitive to negative feedback. We wanted to understand how they respond when witnessing another person’s self‑image being threatened.”
Piispanen emphasised the study’s naturalistic approach: “Previous research on narcissism and empathy has often relied on relatively simple stimuli, such as pictures of emotional facial expressions, or explicitly instructed participants to empathize. Instead, we had participants watch another person receiving negative feedback on their personal stories in a more complex, naturalistic setting, without explicitly asking them to empathize.” He added that this allowed examination of how narcissistic traits are reflected in brain responses as people spontaneously observe and interpret social situations that unfold over time and resemble real life interactions.
In a preregistered design, 935 adults were online‑screened using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which measures grandiose traits such as exhibitionism, entitlement and the desire for authority. From this pool, right‑handed adults without psychiatric or neurological diagnoses were invited to undergo functional magnetic resonance imaging. The final brain‑imaging sample comprised 28 adults with high grandiose narcissism and 30 with low grandiose narcissism, with women making up about 70 per cent of participants.
Participants also completed the Brief Interpersonal Reactivity Index before the scan, which assesses four empathy facets: empathic concern, perspective taking, personal distress and fantasy. Inside the MRI scanner, they watched four personal stories told by an actor about feeling either admired or socially excluded, each followed by a video of an evaluator giving feedback to the storyteller. Half the time the feedback affirmed the storyteller’s account, and half the time it delivered face‑threatening criticism of the story. After each feedback clip, participants rated emotional pleasantness, emotional intensity, sense of control and pride on a nine‑point scale.
The researchers focused on three brain structures linked to different aspects of empathy: the anterior insula, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Each region was subdivided into 16 small areas, and activity was analysed with a method known as intersubject correlation, which measures how closely participants’ brain signals track one another over time when watching a shared stimulus.
In addition to the intersubject correlation analysis, a traditional activation analysis examined brain responses during six 15‑second moments when the evaluator was most blunt in dismissing the storyteller. Across the whole sample, the negative feedback clips lowered reported emotional pleasantness and raised emotional intensity, with some differences across narcissism groups in how pride was affected.
Across the brain, high grandiose narcissism was associated with weaker neural synchronization among participants in five subregions of the DLPFC and PCC when viewing negative feedback. After correcting for multiple comparisons across all 16 subregions, the difference remained statistically significant in two areas: a left‑side subsection of the DLPFC and a rear area of the right PCC. By contrast, differences in synchronization within the anterior insula did not reach statistical significance, and there were no significant group differences in overall activation during the six peak moments of criticism, either in the insula or in the other two regions examined.
As a result, the study found that the narcissism‑related differences were evident in how similarly participants processed the social threat over time, rather than in how strongly their brains reacted at the sharpest moment of criticism. The team notes that similar analyses in a 2024 study showed no significant link between grandiose narcissism and posterior cingulate activation using traditional activation methods.
The authors propose that the reduced synchronization in the DLPFC and PCC—areas tied to cognitive empathy and perspective‑taking—may reflect more variable or less coherent engagement with another person’s predicament among those with high narcissistic traits. Piispanen commented that the findings “may reflect differences in what they pay attention to or how they interpret the situation,” and that they could help explain some social miscommunications associated with strong narcissistic traits.
He cautioned that the lack of difference in the anterior insula suggests the results reflect processing of social information rather than a general deficit in sharing others’ emotions. “One possible explanation is that our experimental setting involved observing and interpreting complex social interactions rather than responding to simple emotional cues,” he noted, “which could help explain why the differences were more pronounced in brain regions associated with interpreting and understanding social situations, rather than those more closely linked to emotional resonance with others.”
The authors stress that their findings pertain to narcissism as a personality trait rather than a clinical narcissistic personality disorder, and that the sample consisted of individuals selected for high grandiose traits. They caution against generalising to vulnerable narcissism, which the study did not directly address, and say further work with larger and more diverse samples is needed to broaden understanding of these neural patterns.
Looking ahead, the team suggests future research should directly measure social emotions such as vicarious embarrassment and humiliation during real-time interactions. “Understanding how narcissistic traits are associated with brain responses in regions related to empathy during social interactions provides new insights into how these traits are expressed in real‑world situations,” Piispanen said. “Our broader goal is to provide a new perspective on narcissism by examining how narcissistic traits are expressed in social interactions, rather than focusing solely on the individual.”
The study, titled Reduced social brain coupling to others’ face threats in narcissism, was authored by Matias Piispanen and colleagues from Aalto University, the University of Helsinki and collaborating researchers.
