Tuned out, not drawn in: blunted neural sensitivity to social reward in narcissism

Abstract

Despite decades of research on narcissism, its neural basis remains poorly understood. Competing accounts hypothesize either heightened responsiveness to socially rewarding feedback (reflecting motives for status and validation) or neural disengagement (reflecting a self-protection motive). To test these hypotheses, we recorded EEG from 98 participants as they completed Monetary and Social Incentive Delay tasks. We measured an event-related potential, known as the Reward Positivity, to examine whether narcissism was associated with altered neural sensitivity to monetarily and socially rewarding feedback. Results revealed a domain-specific dissociation. In the Monetary Incentive Delay task, narcissism was unrelated to neural responses. However, in the Social Incentive Delay task, rivalry narcissism (and overall narcissism) was associated with reduced Reward Positivity amplitudes, whereas admiration narcissism was not. These findings support the self-protective disengagement account, suggesting that individuals high in rivalry evince blunted immediate neural sensitivity to socially rewarding feedback. This early-stage disengagement may serve to maintain a sense of detachment from the self, while limiting opportunities for social learning and connection.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Zhiwei Zhou: orcid.org/0009-0004-7039-3804

ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

ORCID for Nicholas J. Kelley: orcid.org/0000-0003-2256-0597

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