Abstract
Narcissism is a Janusian personality construct, associated with both grandiose self-assuredness and dominance, as well as vulnerable insecurity and reactivity. Central questions of intra- and interpersonal functioning in narcissism are still a matter of debate. Neuroscience could help to understand the paradoxical patterns of experience and behavior beyond the limitations of self-reports. We provide a systematic review of 34 neuroscience studies on grandiose, vulnerable, pathological narcissism, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), spanning experimental investigations of intra- and interpersonal mechanisms, research on neurophysiological and neuroendocrine aspects of baseline function, and brain structural correlates. While neuroscience has scarcely directly studied vulnerable narcissism, grandiose narcissism is associated with heightened vigilance to ego threat and stress responses following ego threat, as well as heightened stress indicators in baseline measures. Such responses are not commonly observed in self-reports, highlighting the potential of neuroscience to augment our understanding of self-regulatory dynamics in narcissism. Interpersonal functioning is characterized by deficits in social-affective processes. Both involve altered activity within the salience network, pointing to a double dissociation regarding the expression of narcissism and self/other oriented situational focus. Findings are summarized in an integrative model providing testable hypotheses for future research along with methodological recommendations.
Highlights
The phenomenon of narcissism has been described for around 2000 years when the myth of Narcissus was documented in ancient Greece
High narcissism and high dACC activation interactively related to aggression
Narcissism associated with functional connectivity differences in amygdala, dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dACC, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex
Summary
The phenomenon of narcissism has been described for around 2000 years when the myth of Narcissus was documented in ancient Greece. Neuroscience methods offer a promising view into narcissistic personality functioning as they might be less influenced by cognitive biases and response styles that can render pure self-report studies problematic These include, among others, overestimation of emotion-related and social competencies in narcissism (Ames & Kammrath, 2004; Jauk, Freudenthaler, et al, 2016; John & Robins, 1994; Lobbestael et al, 2016; Mota et al, 2019; Zajenkowski et al, 2018), which are directly relevant to the studies reviewed here
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