ReviewPersonality neuroscience2021
Can neuroscience help to understand narcissism? A systematic review of an emerging field.
Review in Personality neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Weapon or Armor? Unpacking the Paradox of Narcissism and Self-Reported Mental Health Through a Three-Level Meta-Analysis.Journal of personality · 2026Pooled it
- Narcissistic Traits and Narcissistic Personality Disorder in Dermatology With a Focus on Body-Dysmorphic Disorder.International journal of dermatology · 2026Review
- Narcissism Is Associated With Blunted Error-Related Brain Activity.Journal of personality · 2026Article
- Can directing self-enhancement from social to performance settings alleviate narcissistic personality disorder? Implications from narcissism-performance research.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Traits Are Both Encoded in the Triple Network: Connectomics Evidence.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Beyond good and evil : The pursuit of philosophical and scientific truth in a time of moral ambiguity.EMBO reports · 2025Article
- Psychoanalytically informed MDMA-assisted therapy for pathological narcissism: a novel theoretical approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Linking grandiose and vulnerable narcissism to managerial work performance, through the lens of core personality traits and social desirability.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The dark side of personality functioning: associations between antisocial cognitions, personality functioning (AMPD), empathy and mentalisation.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- The Neural Correlates of Narcissism: Is There a Connection with Desire for Fame and Celebrity Worship?Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Narcissism predicts noise perception but not signal decoding in emotion.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Do highly sensitive persons display hypersensitive narcissism? Similarities and differences in the nomological networks of sensory processing sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism.Journal of clinical psychology · 2023Article
- Narcissism and the perception of failure - evidence from the error-related negativity and the error positivity.Personality neuroscience · 2023Article
- Editorial: an emerging field with bright prospects.Personality neuroscience · 2023Article
- Cortisol reactivity to psychosocial stress in vulnerable and grandiose narcissists: An exploratory study.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The concept of Narcissistic Personality Disorder-Three levels of analysis for interdisciplinary integration.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
- Effects of Self-Esteem on Self-Viewing: An Eye-Tracking Investigation on Mirror Gazing.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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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.