The dark side of empathy in narcissistic personality disorder

Abstract

Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by self-absorption, grandiosity, exploitation of others and lack of empathy. People with that disorder may switch from an overt form, mainly with grandiosity, to a covert presentation, with fears, hypersensitivity and dependence from others. Empathy represents a key point in detecting people affected by narcissistic personality disorder because, even if it is described as reduced, it plays a fundamental role in exploitation and manipulation. A systematic search of Literature without any language or time restriction, was performed combining thesaurus and free-search indexing terms related to Narcissistic personality disorder and empathy and produced 531 results. Fifty-two papers that analyzed possible issues in the empathic attitude of people with narcissistic personality disorder were included in this narrative review. Empathy is the capability of understating and feeling others emotions. It is not a unitary construct and can be distinguished in cognitive and affective. It might be channeled into prosocial and antisocial behaviors. A crucial trait identified in narcissistic empathy is affective dissonance that is closely related to rivalry as part of the dark tetrad (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism). Subjects affected by narcissistic personality disorder show greater impairment in affective aspects while their cognitive part of empathy appears preserved. Saving at least the cognitive aspects of empathy may contribute to therapeutic improvement of affective aspects.

I understand your pain but I do not feel it: lower affective empathy in response to others’ social pain in narcissism

“…The results remained consistent regardless of the measurement methods used, which included a video-task and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). This finding aligns with recent studies including meta-analyses investigating the relationship between narcissism and affective empathy (Vonk et al, 2013;Chukwuorji et al, 2020;Urbonaviciute and Hepper, 2020;Eddy, 2021;Jacobs, 2022;Simard et al, 2022;di Giacomo et al, 2023).…”

“…Understanding the social pain of others without feeling it may help to explain grandiose narcissistic characteristics such as the exploitation of others ( Lamm et al, 2016 ; Di Pierro et al, 2018 ; di Giacomo et al, 2023 ; Duradoni et al, 2023 ), and the volatility often seen in narcissistic romantic relationships, where social pain as a result of rejection and abandonment (e.g., the “silent treatment”), is highly relevant, and may even be applied instrumentally by highly narcissistic individuals ( Eddy, 2021 ).…”

“…Whereas research focusing on narcissism invariably reports a decline in AE, the results are less clear when it comes to CE (e.g., Wai and Tiliopoulos, 2012;Vonk et al, 2013;Pajevic et al, 2018;Turner et al, 2019;di Giacomo et al, 2023). Jonason and Krause (2013) observed that narcissism correlates with decreased affective empathy and difficulties in emotion recognition.…”

A Multidimensional Exploration of Narcissistic Personality Disorder through Psycholinguistic Analysis and Neuroscientific Correlates

“…It profoundly in uences an individual's self-perception, interpersonal relationships, and overall psychosocial well-being. The intricate web of narcissistic traits, ranging from an exaggerated sense of self-importance to a pervasive lack of empathy, poses signi cant challenges not only to those directly affected but also to the broader societal fabric (di Giacomo et al, 2023). This article aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of NPD, adopting a psycholinguistics perspective to unravel how language serves as a window into the cognitive and emotional dimensions of narcissistic behavior.…”