ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2015
Narcissists' social pain seen only in the brain.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- The convergent neuroscience of Christian prayer and attachment relationships in the context of mental health: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Climbing up or falling down: Narcissism predicts physiological sensitivity to social status in children and their parents.Developmental science · 2021Trial
- Narcissism Is Associated With Blunted Error-Related Brain Activity.Journal of personality · 2026Article
- Navigating Peer Inclusion And Exclusion: Pathological Narcissism, Reflective Functioning, And Rejection-Related Emotions In Adolescents.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2026Article
- Reflecting the Self: The Mirror Effect of Narcissistic Self-Regulation in Older Adults' Evaluations of Empathic vs. Cold Socially Assistive Robots.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Traits Are Both Encoded in the Triple Network: Connectomics Evidence.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Having more friends is associated with greater sensitization to social exclusion: neural and behavioral evidence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Psychoanalytically informed MDMA-assisted therapy for pathological narcissism: a novel theoretical approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Neural processing of audiovisual and painful analogue trauma and its relationship with subsequent audiovisual and pain intrusions.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2024Article
- Article
- The Neural Correlates of Narcissism: Is There a Connection with Desire for Fame and Celebrity Worship?Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Structural connectivity of grandiose versus vulnerable narcissism as models of social dominance and subordination.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Narcissism and the perception of failure - evidence from the error-related negativity and the error positivity.Personality neuroscience · 2023Article
- The dark side of empathy in narcissistic personality disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Review
- Early physiological indicators of narcissism and self-esteem in children.Psychophysiology · 2022Article
- A neural and behavioral trade-off between value and uncertainty underlies exploratory decisions in normative anxiety.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Article
- Distress and retaliatory aggression in response to witnessing intergroup exclusion are greater on higher levels of collective narcissism.Psychophysiology · 2021Article
- Narcissistic personality traits and prefrontal brain structure.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Pathological Narcissism and Emotional Responses to Rejection: The Impact of Adult Attachment.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Can neuroscience help to understand narcissism? A systematic review of an emerging field.Personality neuroscience · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Narcissism is a complex phenomenon, involving a level of defensive self-enhancement. Narcissists have avoidant attachment styles, maintain distance in relationships and claim not to need others. However, they are especially sensitive to others' evaluations, needing positive reflected appraisals to maintain their inflated self-views, and showing extreme responses (e.g. aggression) when rejected. The current study tested the hypothesis that narcissists also show hypersensitivity in brain systems associated with distress during exclusion. We measured individual differences in narcissism (Narcissistic Personality Inventory) and monitored neural responses to social exclusion (Cyberball). Narcissism was significantly associated with activity in an a priori anatomically defined social pain network (anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex) during social exclusion. Results suggest hypersensitivity to exclusion in narcissists may be a function of hypersensitivity in brain systems associated with distress, and suggests a potential pathway that connects narcissism to negative consequences for longer-term physical and mental health-findings not apparent with self-report alone.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.