Narcissists experience more feelings of exclusion

A new article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology detailed the cycle that people with narcissistic personality traits cannot easily escape and sink deeper and deeper.

It has been stated that people who are more attached to their own self are more likely to see signs in social environments as more negative.

It has been pointed out that the dominant personality traits displayed by narcissists also increase their chances of being excluded.

It was emphasized in Independent Turkish that with the combination of these two situations, narcissistic characteristics become more severe over time and a self-renewing cycle comes into play.

Speaking about the paper of which she is the lead author, Christiane Büttner from the University of Basel in Switzerland says that her research sheds light on how personality traits affect daily life:

Many people interpret narcissism as arrogance and self-entitlement, but our research shows that narcissists often experience the pain of socialization.

The study, based on large-scale surveys and experiments involving tens of thousands of people living in the US, Germany, Britain, Switzerland and New Zealand, examined who suffers most from social exclusion and why.

NARCISSISTS ARE EXCLUDED

It was found that grandiose narcissists, who pay more attention to cues to dominate social environments, experience more feelings of exclusion.

The other possibility, which has not been confirmed, is that these self-righteous people would not feel the bad behavior. But even more interestingly, the narcissists were actually ostracized.

Büttner says that according to his findings, "exclusion and narcissistic traits feed each other over time."

Erica Hepper, who teaches social psychology at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, says research she was not involved in supports previous findings:

We already know that narcissists are more selfish and less empathetic, and that they are less loved over time, which can be problematic in their relationships. Narcissists may believe that others are out to harm them, although there is no evidence to support this. Our research suggests that this is because narcissists feel a constant need to defend their grandiose yet fragile ego. They are always looking for threats to their ego so that they can easily ward them off.

Büttner also outlined limitations of the latest study, which he noted may have missed something by relying on participants’ own narratives of exclusion and by not including those who were pathologically narcissistic.

He added that future research on the subject could be effective in managing conflicts in large groups such as workplaces and social media and reducing the negative consequences of exclusion.