Instant Genius - How to spot a narcissist, with Dr Erica Hepper

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Be it in the office or at home, it’s likely there’s at least one narcissist in your life. But what exactly are the key traits of narcissism? Are narcissists necessarily bad people? And how can you tell if you’re one? To answer these questions and much more, we’re joined by Dr Erica Hepper, lecturer in psychology at the University of Surrey. She also unpacks the key misconceptions about narcissism, its causes, and whether narcissists can ever change their behaviour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Are narcissists necessarily bad people? And how can you tell if you're one? To answer these questions and much more, I'm joined by Dr. Erica Hepper. lecturer in psychology at the University of Surrey. She explains the key misconceptions about narcissism, its causes, and also whether narcissists can ever be treated. Hello, Erica. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. So I'm going to start off with a very big question, which is what actually is narcissism? Yep, that's a big one. So I think the first thing to make really clear is that we can think of narcissism, and many people might do, as a clinical disorder, and that would

be narcissistic personality disorder. However, actually, narcissistic personality disorder itself is really rare. So it's relatively unlikely that you know somebody with NPD in your life. Less than 1% of people in the population probably have NPD. However, narcissism is also a normal, everyday personality trait. And that we see all around us. So it's a continuous dimension, which we can be anywhere on the spectrum of narcissism, just like we can be anywhere between being extroverted or introverted. And we all have a little, little bit of narcissism somewhere in us, I expect. So it's only when it being narcissistic becomes really super extreme and interferes with someone's ability to function in everyday life or causes some

severe distress, that we would start to classify it as narcissistic personality disorder. But narcissism as a trait is all around us and is really common. So if someone has the disorder then, what would sort of count as extreme distress in that case? Because I guess the example most people might have in their head is someone who's so obsessed for their image in the mirror, they're not able to leave the house. Well, that would be the Greek myth of narcissus. That's exactly what happened to him. He fell in love with his reflection and then ended up wasting away because he was ignoring everything else. I think it can happen in a couple of ways. So something can be classified as a clinical disorder, either if it causes severe distress and impairment to yourself, but also to others around you. So sometimes people would be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder if basically family member or two have kind of shoved them to the doctor's office and said, look, this isn't okay, you're not managing, we're not managing, you need help. And so that would be kind of the distress it's causing to other people around them. But it can also

be distressed to the person themselves if they, essentially if, you know, someone with very high narcissism might construct an unrealistic, exaggerated view of themselves. And ultimately, if they're faced with crashing reality that that unrealistic view is not actually true, then then that can cause them severe distress. So if they've had a, you know, a real incident in their life that shows them actually things aren't as they seem, then that that can cause them kind of a crash of self-esteem and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and depression and anxiety, and therefore that might lead them to seek support. So you're saying about zero to one percent of people might have a narcissistic disorder.

Is there any idea of how many people just might be high in narcissistic traits? Um, so we tend not to categorize people because it's a, continuous dimension and you can be anywhere on it. As you might expect, the sort of average levels of narcissism in the population are quite low. So when we, so we tend to measure, I'll use the word normal in air quotes. We measure normal narcissism using kind of survey questionnaire measures. And on average, people tend to be relatively low on the spectrum. However, whenever we give out the questionnaire to large samples of people, we always find people who are higher as well. So it's not about the number that might have narcissism, as it were.

But certainly, if I teach classes of, say, 100 to 200 students, you know, there'll always be a handful in there that are basically whopping narcissists. So I guess I should really ask them, what are the key traits of narcissistic people? Yeah, of course. I guess when most people think of a narcissist, you're probably picturing someone who's kind of arrogant, a bit up to themselves, thinks they're super. to everybody else, maybe as kind of manipulative and selfish. Now, those are key characteristics of narcissism, but I think what's really interesting about narcissism and one reason that I love studying it so much is that it's kind of multifaceted. So, you know, some of those

characteristics don't necessarily seem to go together, you know, being really sort of confident and thinking you're great. It doesn't necessarily go along with being fragile and, you're and manipulative, it doesn't have to go together, but in a narcissist it does. So the first thing, I guess I would say is that there are two main types of narcissist, and one of those would be called a grandiose narcissist, and the other would be called a vulnerable narcissist. Now, they share some sort of core traits, which are those aspects of being kind of antagonistic, disagreeable, lacking empathy for others, being very defensive and sensitive to criticism. So that's kind of at the common core of narcissism, as it were. But someone who's a grandiose narcissist,

as well as having those traits, actually they have some characteristics that are perfectly benign and helpful. So a grandiose narcissist is someone who's confident, who's charming, who's charismatic, they kind of well put together, they often, you know, a well-belled groomed, look after themselves. They make a really good first impression when you meet them. And they're also kind of assertive and socially dominant. They'll lead the conversation. They'll tell the best stories. They make a really good impression in job interviews or in dates, that kind of thing. And they're sort of natural-born leaders. And of course, we need people like that in society, don't we? So being, you know, a grandiose narcissist is a combination of this,

what we call agenetic extroversion, this assertiveness, dominance and charmingness. along with the antagonism side of things. So those two elements of grandiose narcissism often will usually go together, but you can be higher on one than the other. So you'd get grandiose narcissists that are kind of really charming and confident and great leaders

and not so problematic in the antagonistic aspects. And you would get grandiose narcissists are the other way around as well. So with the vulnerable narcissists, do they essentially have a lot of the, antagonistic traits, but not so much the charming ones? Exactly, yeah. So a vulnerable narcissist is someone who has the antagonistic traits, but coupled with a third component, which we call narcissistic neuroticism,

which is about being really fragile, really hypersensitive, really anxious, about being rejected or about what other people think. So someone who's a vulnerable narcissist, kind of has the worst of both worlds essentially doesn't have the social skills, it's more antagonistic and disagreeable, but also kind of really reacts badly to criticism. That's the kind of person that you feel like you're walking on eggshells around

and you really have to sort of think about how you say things because they can lash out quite quickly if you say the wrong thing. That's really interesting. I think most people think of narcissists as people who think that, you know, they are superior to other people, but I take it this is only one kind

of narcissism. Exactly, yes. I think grandiose narcissists are much more what people think of and bring to mind when you think of narcissism. And actually, grandiose narcissism is much better understood as well. So as researchers, we've done a lot more work understanding grandiose narcissism than we have vulnerable narcissism. But that is changing and we're starting to see that they have these shared components and study them together. So is there anything else that you want to say about the traits of a narcissist? So I think one thing that one motivation that really underlies a lot of narcissists' behaviour

is their really strong motive to self-enhance and self-protect. And what I mean by that is the need to have a positive view of themselves, of their self-and-identity, and to maintain that positive view at all costs. And so I mentioned self-enhance and also self-protect. So self-enhancement is kind of seeking positive views of the self. So, for example, a narcissist will kind of do a lot of boasting about their positive characteristics or their experiences. They'll show off. They'll name drop.

They'll, you know, where the most designer brands they can afford to make this positive first impression. You know, if they're working in a team work, they'll take all the credit for successes that the team has, things like that. So that's self-enhancing. So kind of gathering all the positive feedback and positive impressions you can. And then self-protection is, what it sounds like, is protecting the self from negative feedback or from negative views. So narcissists are desperate to fend off any criticism, any implication that they're not perfect, essentially.

So they might do this by putting down others to show you how they're not as bad as other people, they're better than other people. they might do this by making any kind of excuses they possibly can when things don't go well. And they also do it by getting very defensive and aggressive when they're criticized or when things don't go right for them. So that would be in any case of what we call ego threat. So anything that happens that threatens that sense of being awesome, essentially. So yeah, narcissists are really, really strong on both self-enhancing and self-protecting. And they will do anything they can to achieve those aims.

And is that true these traits of self-enhancing and self-protecting, both for the grandiose narcissist and for the vulnerable narcissist? So the grandiose narcissists are more likely to use, well, actually they use all of them, but the agentic extroversion aspect of narcissism leads more to the self-enhancing focus. And the antagonism and the kind of vulnerable neuroticism aspects of narcissism lead more to the self-protection. So someone who's high and grandiose narcissism, probably engage in both of those. They probably seek both self-enhancement and self-protection. But someone who's a real vulnerable narcissist is more focus on self-protection. So it sounds like narcissism is a lot more complex than I think most people would have thought of. With that in mind, is it easy to spot a narcissist?

I'm guessing no. Yeah, my answer would be no, not straight away. So when you first meet, I mean, I'll take grandiose narcissist as a, as a, as a, classic example. When you first meet an narcissist, they make a great impression. You know, if you're out socially, you know, they'll be the one telling the best stories, you know, leading the conversation, they know the best places to go. They're fun to spend time with. They have great ideas. It can be impulsive, which can be great fun. And, you know, when you have a spontaneous friend who makes great suggestions of things to do and so on. And they come across well in job

interviews, they get those first dates. So actually, when you first meet a narcissist, you think, oh, great, you know, this person's fab. And actually, you can only really spot that they're a narcissist after you've got to know them a bit better. So in a social situation, that might be that you've kind of, you know, met them a few times in different scenarios and you realize that actually, hang on a minute, they might be telling the best stories, but they never asked me anything about myself or that actually they don't really care about other people around them. It's all about that surface level. If you're trying to be friends with a grandiose narcissist, if you try to go to them with a problem,

you'll realize that they lack that empathy and that actually is all about them. So it takes a few occasions or it takes a critical incident where you try to rely on them or seek support from them before you kind of realize, hang on a minute, this person's all about themselves. And in a job situation, similarly, they probably make a great impression at a job interview. They're likely to land jobs. And they get promoted as well. They do well at promotion cases. They are good at playing the game to get themselves ahead on the career ladder. But once you've worked with a narcissist a while or tried to manage them, you'd realize, well, they're really terrible at taking on board feedback. That actually they're not a great team player

because they're treading on other team members to get ahead, or they're taking all the credit for successes and blaming other people for things that don't go well. They manipulate others. They're less committed to their workplace, so they're more likely to jump ship if a better offer comes along, that sort of thing. So actually, you know, if you want to spot a narcissist,

you need to start looking for clues earlier on that they lack empathy, perhaps, that they're not considering other people's needs, or perhaps in a job setting, You need to start looking for clues that they are, you know, sucking up all the, all the credit for positive things and blaming others for the negatives. Is it slightly different if you're trying to identify a vulnerable narcissist? Yeah, so a vulnerable narcissist, they wouldn't make that positive first impression in the first place. Actually, you can quite quickly tell that they are more on the disagreeable or more on the anxious side.

And so vulnerable narcissism doesn't quite have that same paradox that grandiose narcissism seems to have. with grandiose narcissists and there's great elements to their behaviour and also risks, whereas vulnerable narcissists, they're kind of suffering and you can tell. Is there any behaviours which a vulnerable narcissist might be likely to enact? So if you're at work and your colleague doesn't offer their view in a meeting, but then kind of sulk that they didn't get asked afterwards, that would be one potential marker. if there's a general negative comment made about a group or about the whole team, but they take it really personally, that might be a marker, a vulnerable narcissism.

It's, you know, when you think you haven't done anything wrong, but they take it really personally and overreact, that's often something that would give a hint about a vulnerable narcissist. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

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Believe me, many have. Yeah, so being in a dating or romantic relationship with a narcissist is an interesting one. And I think it depends what you're looking for in a relationship. So say you are recently out of a long-term relationship, you're on the rebound, you're looking for someone to give you a good time and get your confidence back. Go for a narcissist, absolutely. you know, they'll take you on great dates. They'll probably pay because they want to be flashy.

You'll have fun. However, if you once a narcissist, but a grandiose narcissist anyway, has been in a relationship for a while, again, the cracks start to show. So we know that narcissists tend to have, they're less committed to their partners. They're more likely to cheat.

They are more manipulative. So they're more likely to, you know, use tactics like coercion and control to try and keep a romantic partner. And the relationships are more likely to turn toxic essentially in different ways. We see that as relationships go on, both narcissists and their partners actually get less satisfied with those relationships. They're less happy in them. And so they end up breaking up and not lasting. How often is it that you get to narcissists in a relationship? with each other. Do narcissists tend to attract each other? They definitely can do. So especially in

the early stages, narcissists do tend to be attracted to each other. You often get, you know, high narcissist pairings, basically as long as the relationship works for them. And I think actually that that goes for almost any relationship, friendship, job choice that narcissists make. As long as it works for them and helps them to self-enhance, they'll be happy in it. So if you get two narcissists that both like, you know, being seen together, who both like, you know, have maybe have the same resources to have the designer clothes and, you know, one might have a flash car and the other one might have access to, you know, the it clubs of the day. Then it will work for them and they'll be happy together. However, because they are both out for themselves, essentially, those relationships

don't tend to last. And in the long term, narcissists tend to be more happy with a more submissive partner who will give them the flattery that they need. How are narcissists actually diagnose in the first place? How can you measure someone's narcissistic traits? When we're looking at the personality trait of narcissism, we use questionnaire measures, which you might think, well, how does somebody know that they're a narcissist? But of course, what we're asking is about the specific behaviours or beliefs that narcissists tend to have. For example, that they're better than other people, or that they secretly want their rivals to fail, things like that. And actually, we find that narcissists are quite willing to admit to these sorts of thoughts

and behaviours because they don't think there's anything wrong with them. In fact, there's one research team has developed a measure of narcissism, which is basically, I'm a narcissist. And people rate, you know, on a one to seven scale, how much they agree with that. And, you know, it kind of predicts some behavior. So people who are narcissists often kind of know that they're narcissists, and don't care. Does that mean that if someone is worried that they are a narcissist, they're likely not to be a narcissist? That's exactly right. If you're, if you're worried about

whether you're a narcissist or not, you're probably not, because it means you're concerned that this isn't a good thing or that you are concerned about the impact that you might be having on other people. And a true narcissist doesn't have that concern. But if you think that you might be a narcissist and you quite like the sound of it, that you probably think you might be one. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And in that case, it may be that you would be higher on the agentic extroversion aspect of narcissism, which actually there's nothing wrong with that. We need people who are agentic extroverts in our communities. So what sort of behaviours are in this narcissistic questionnaire? So to measure grandiose narcissism, we have behaviours like enjoying successes, drawing attention to yourself in conversation. and feeling like you're a very special person that gives you a lot of strength and being the

centre of attention. And the antagonism aspect of narcissism is measured by things like taking pleasure and the failure of rivals, getting annoyed when you're criticised, can't stand it if somebody else is at the centre of events, and believing that other people won't achieve anything or are losers. So how do we know that a questionnaire like the one you mentioned actually works. How good is it at sort of spotting narcissists? I mean, any psychology questionnaire measure has to go through rigorous validation procedures

before we start using it to measure or categorize people. And all of the measures of narcissism that exist have gone through rounds of kind of checking that people answer the same way if they're given it more than once at different times. They have done studies where, you ask people to fill in the measure and then you observe their behavior and see that actually people who score higher on the questionnaire do indeed behave differently when they're put in a

situation. So for example, that they do, they are rated as more attractive and charming when you watch a video of their behaviour or they do claim more credit for successes and for failures, for example. So we know that scores on this measure can predict people's behavior and people's reactions to events in the ways that we would expect narcissists to react. Are narcissists generally quite happy or unhappy people? Is it a real mix? Yeah, it's a bit of a mix. It depends which type of narcissist you're talking about. So vulnerable narcissists tend not to be very happy people. They're always worried about if they're going to get criticized or if something's going to go wrong for them and they're quite fragile people. So they tend to have quite low self-esteem and quite a lot of anxiety about the world. Grandiose narcissists, it depends what day you catch them. So they, and how you measure it. So they, if you ask a randios narcissist, are you happy? Are you satisfied with your life? Do you have high self-esteem? They'll say, yes, everything's great. My life is wonderful. But if you look a bit closer, there are chinks in that armour. So, for example,

if you measure their mood or their self-esteem lots of times over the course of a few days or a week, you actually see quite a lot of fluctuation, which shows that when things happen to them that aren't so positive, they do get affected by those things. So they are experiencing more negative mood or flashes of lower self-esteem. And when you measure their, for example, their cortisol levels, they do show kind of higher sort of cortisol stress responses to stressful events or to criticism or failure. So it shows that actually underneath they're more fragile than they think they are. And so in the long term, this can affect even grandiose narcissists negatively. So one thing that we see is that grandiose narcissists, well, and vulnerable narcissists, are quite paranoid. So they're so

desperate to self-protect and attribute negative events or failure to external causes, but actually they start to believe that other people are out to get them. And this can happen in ambiguous situations, but also when it's really unfounded. For example, we can. found that narcissists report feeling paranoid after they've been excluded from a ball tossing game, but also when they were included. So even when there was nothing wrong with the social situation, narcissists were thinking other people were out to get them. And we know that paranoia can lead people to feel anxious and can interfere with their well-being in everyday life. So that's not a healthy way to go through life, basically. And the other way that I think narcissism can end up

having a negative impact on well-being, it's actually by alienating other people, because we all rely on social support from our friends and family and people around us. And that's really, really important for people's health and well-being. But actually, if you're a narcissist who goes through life, you know, picking up people and then chucking them when you don't need them anymore, then you don't have that really close, supportive network around you when things start to go wrong. So I think in times of stress, narcissists are less well equipped to cope than people who are lower on narcissism. You seem to suggest before that narcissists tend to be quite low in empathy. Can narcissists actually show any empathy at all?

So that's an interesting question and one which we don't have the definitive answer for yet. But essentially it seems that, and again I'm going to talk mostly about grandiose narcissists because we know more about their empathy processes. So grandiose narcissists seem to be perfectly capable of what we call perspective taking, so the cognitive aspect of empathy. So this is being able to see the world from somebody else's point of view, being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. So grandiose narcissists are perfectly capable of that,

but they don't tend to do it in everyday life. They're not bothered, essentially. So as a result, they don't experience emotional empathy. So they don't share in other people's joy or sadness because they're not bothering to see the situation from the other person's point of view. And they're not therefore experiencing, you know, real sympathy or compassion for the other person either. However, we think that they're perfectly capable of doing so. So we've done some research that shows that when you actually, instruct people to perspective take.

Or you think about this from the other person's point of view. They can actually do it. And then they start to show more emotional reactions as well and also more physiological reactions to other people's distress. So they're capable, but they just don't bother. So I think that, you know, where we're at at the moment is trying to find the ways of encouraging narcissists to empathise and motivating them to do so. And I think that could really help their relationship.

relationships as well. That's really interesting. So can somebody, if they are narcissist, be treated or quote unquote, cured? Yeah, that's a million dollar question. And yeah, and again, something that we're really actively looking to find out more about. And I think there's a difference between trying to change somebody's fundamental personality, which let's face it might be extremely challenging, versus just trying to help them behave in ways that will, you know, make them more productive members of society or ultimately help their own well-being. So whether we can stop someone being a narcissist, I doubt it, but whether we can encourage them to behave in more pro-social ways, I think we can. So the two main ways that I think are really promising are, it's all

about reducing that antagonism side of things. So we don't need to change, you know, narcissistic, agentic extroversion, that's great. You know, keep that up. What we need to change is that antagonistic, selfish, manipulative, defensive side. So we can either do that, hopefully, by reducing their sensitivity to threat. So we can help them to cope better with ego threat and the idea of failing. So, for example, there's a, there's a technique in social psychology called self-affirmation, which is where we ask people to focus on, actually, their values and what's really important in life and bolster their sense of identity that way. And lots and lots of research has shown that when people have self-affirmed, they're actually less defensive and more

able to cope with threatening information or threatening experiences. So it may be that by doing that, we can stop narcissists going down that antagonistic route and actually enable them to kind of to focus on their agendasic extroversion. And the other thing we can do is maybe to try and encourage more communal behaviors, more prosocial behaviors. If we can find situations or relationships in which narcissists are naturally a bit more empathic or a bit more pro-social or a bit more thoughtful and kind of encourage and cultivate those, then again that might enable us to get the benefits of their identical extroversion

without the risks and without the negatives of their antagonism. Are certain demographics more likely to be narcissists? So are there people in certain careers perhaps, which might be more likely to be a narcissist? I think there are probably careers that appeal more to narcissists to enter in the first place. Anything with that five minutes of fame attached to it. Anything, if you're trying to make a career as a reality TV contestant,

chances are you're fairly high on narcissism. But ultimately, they're a narcissist in all walks of life. So any career or any organisation that you go to, there'll be some narcissists in there. And if they've been around a while, they're probably the ones that have climbed up the career ladder and managed to get those promotions and get higher up. Is it more likely to be a certain gender? I mean, so men tend to score higher on narcissism than women. But, I think that's a very small difference and you can get narcissists of all genders. Is there any evidence that there's more narcissism in today's society than say 10 years ago? So I think a lot of people will think about social media and sort of selfie culture and probably

think that's true. But is there any studies behind this, any evidence there? The only evidence I'm aware of is actually from a few years ago now when social media hadn't yet really taken off. There has long been the suggestion that society is becoming more narcissistic. And there are certainly evidence from the 2000s that young adults were more narcissistic then than they were 30 years earlier.

I don't know that we have really good more up-to-date evidence because we tend to use different measures of narcissism now that disentangle those different aspects better. So we don't have really good comparative data from a long time ago. But yeah, the chances are, that society is encouraging narcissism. Whether that actually changes someone's personality

or more just their behaviour in the way they exhibit their traits is a different question. Might that indicate that narcissism is not genetic then or how much genetics do you think might play a role in whether someone's a narcissist? So like any personality traits, narcissism is partly genetic

and partly shaped by our environment. So we tend to see that between a third, third and a half of the variance in narcissism is genetics. So that means people are born with, you know, a predisposition to be higher or lower on narcissism. But that sort of proneness can be brought out more or less by the environment we grow up in. And there are two main schools of thought on which environments encourage narcissism. So one is the idea that narcissists are kids who are put on a pedestal as, you know, when they were younger, and told they were perfect and then they feel they have to keep that up and they create this kind of fragile sense

of superiority that they have to constantly keep up throughout life. And the other is actually that they were relatively neglected as children and perhaps not told they were good enough. And then they're constantly searching for a sense that they're better. And we don't have really, really good long-term evidence to tease those apart yet. So that's something that we're working on. What's the best way of sort of dealing with a narcissist, to say if you had a narcissist manager, is there any sort of tips which you could sort of give about how to handle them? So I think I would try and translate those two strategies that we can use for reducing narcissism. So the first one is we know that narcissists are very fragile and easily defensive and aggressive.

So try to avoid triggering that threat idea. So, you know, when you're trying to put to get somebody to adopt an idea, you have to try and make it make them think it's their own idea. You sort of have to do a bit of a roundabout route as well if you want to give any negative feedback or suggest something could be done differently. So try and find a way of them getting that message without you actually directly criticizing them. Because as soon as you criticize a narcissist, they won't hear anything else that you say. they will go into shutdown mode where they are only interested in protecting their ego. And so you need to tread very softly when it comes to delivering any criticism or negative feedback. And the other one is to try and encourage any glimpses of more pro-social behavior that you can find.

So if they are ever helpful or supportive, then really praise that and say how much you appreciate it. and it might encourage them to consider other people's views a little bit more as well. But, yeah, treading softly, I think, is the short answer. You sort of covered it a bit, but it'd be good to sort of ask you directly. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about narcissists that you sort of see in popular media? Do you know what? I think the biggest misconception about narcissists is that they are bad people and should be somehow eradicated or reduced or cured.

because actually in society we need all kinds of people and we need narcissists in society too. So we need people who are willing to take the lead, who are wanting to take those responsible roles within our communities, within our organisations. We need people who are confident and assertive. And, you know, we also need the people in our friendship groups and social circles who will take the lead and like to be the centre of attention and get things. done. High narcissists will want to succeed and so they'll want to succeed for the rest of us as well. So we need narcissists in society. We just have to think about what roles they work best in. That was Dr. Erica Hepha lecturer in psychology at the University of Surrey talking us through the science of narcissism. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you by

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