Self-viewing is associated with negative affect rather than reward in highly narcissistic men: an fMRI study

Abstract

Subclinical narcissism is a personality trait with two faces: According to social-cognitive theories it is associated with grandiosity and feelings of superiority, whereas psychodynamic theories emphasize vulnerable aspects like fluctuating self-esteem and emotional conflicts. The psychodynamic view, however, is commonly not supported by self-report studies on subclinical narcissism. Personality neuroscience might help to better understand the phenomenon of narcissism beyond the limits of self-report research. While social-cognitive theory would predict that self-relevant processing should be accompanied by brain activity in reward-related areas in narcissistic individuals, psychodynamic theory would suggest that it should be accompanied by activation in regions pointing to negative affect or emotional conflict. In this study, extreme groups of high and low narcissistic individuals performed a visual self-recognition paradigm during fMRI. Viewing one’s own face (as compared to faces of friends and strangers) was accompanied by greater activation of the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in highly narcissistic men. These results suggest that highly narcissistic men experience greater negative affect or emotional conflict during self-relevant processing and point to vulnerable aspects of subclinical narcissism that might not be apparent in self-report research.

Individualized prediction of trait narcissism from whole‐brain resting‐state functional connectivity

“…In line with the current findings, previous task‐based brain imagining studies have related narcissism to the activity of these regions in specific tasks (Cascio et al, ; Chester & DeWall, ; Fan et al, ; Jauk et al, ). Notably, important features (e.g., amygdala) contributing to predictive network of narcissism have also been previously implicated in narcissistic personality functioning of narcissistic personality disorder (Ronningstam & Baskin‐Sommers, ).…”

“…Moreover, the predictive features adopted by the model reveal neural correlates of the trait narcissism. In light of previous studies (Cascio et al, ; Chester & DeWall, ; Fan et al, ; Jauk et al, ; Ronningstam & Baskin‐Sommers, ), we hypothesized that individual differences in trait narcissism would be predicted by a wide array of functional connectivity across distributed networks, particularly those implicated in emotion regulation (e.g., dlPFC), emotional processing (e.g., amygdala, ventral mPFC [vmPFC]), empathy (dACC, AI), and theory of mind (e.g., dorsal mPFC [dmPFC]).…”

“…Recent neuroscientific studies have corroborated this assertion by demonstrating the modulation of narcissism in many neuropsychological functions. For instance, among high compared to low narcissistic men, self‐relevant processing induced enhanced activation in the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (dACC/vACC), regions associated with negative affect or emotional conflict (Jauk, Benedek, Koschutnig, Kedia, & Neubauer, ). Moreover, high compared to low narcissistic participants scored higher in the alexithymia, and exhibited lower deactivation of the anterior insula (AI) during empathy (Fan, et al, ).…”

What's in a blush? Physiological blushing reveals narcissistic children's social‐evaluative concerns

“…First, we focused specifically on blushing. Researchers should corroborate our findings using other methods that circumvent narcissistic impression management strategies (Paulhus & Vazire, ), such as neuroimaging (Jauk, Benedek, Koschutnig, Kedia, & Neubauer, ). Second, we conducted the study in the Netherlands, a Western country where children are used to being praised in inflated ways (Brummelman, Crocker, & Bushman, ).…”

Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders: Relationship With Oxidative Stress

“…This is likely of some importance, because phenotypic controversies have led to lack of consensus on nosology (Ronningstam, 2013). As an important example, neuroimaging research has provided unexpected evidence of hyperreactivity in highly narcissistic individuals of the social pain network (Cascio, Konrath, & Falk, 2013;Jauk, Benedek, Koschutnig, Kedia, & Neubauer, 2017) and the motor mimicry network (Marcoux et al, 2014) during social interaction tasks. These findings raise important questions about the relationship between NPD and near-neighbor conditions such as antisocial and borderline personality disorders.…”