Reduced social brain coupling to others' face threats in narcissism

Although several studies have linked narcissism to reduced empathy, the neural mechanisms underlying narcissistic behavior in socially complex, naturalistic contexts remain poorly understood. This study investigated how grandiose narcissistic traits are associated with neural dynamics in empathy-related areas of the "social brain" when participants observed another person receiving face-threatening feedback. We hypothesized that individuals with high narcissistic traits would exhibit lower intersubject correlation (ISC), indicating less synchronized neural responses across participants, in the anterior insula (aINS), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) in response to face threats directed at others. Participants with high (n = 28) and low (n = 30) scores in grandiose narcissism watched videos during functional magnetic resonance imaging in which another person received face-threatening feedback to a personal story. Consistent with our hypothesis, highly narcissistic individuals exhibited reduced ISC in the dlPFC and PCC. In aINS, the effect did not reach statistical significance. The present findings suggest that trait narcissism reduces convergence in empathic responses particularly in areas related to cognitive empathy when witnessing social threats targeted at others. These findings further indicate that ecologically relevant experimental designs may help clarify how personality traits are expressed in neural responses to socially meaningful events.