Narcissism: Disorder, Behavior, & Signs​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Narcissism is an intense sense of self-importance accompanied by a need for other people to continually affirm this importance. How can you spot a narcissist?
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Despite being in the field of psychology for a while now, I have only run into a few bona fide narcissists. Interestingly, two have been the parents of previous romantic partners of mine, and neither of those partners was very narcissistic herself. These were parents for whom the entire conversation, the entire day, needed to revolve around them. One of them, higher functioning and happily entrenched in his role as patriarch, would deign to engage with me at times. 
The other one, despite the fact that her daughter and I had been dating for over a year, would not acknowledge my presence when her family gathered and never asked me a question about myself.

None of this bothered me too much because I knew it was coming. Most people who have narcissists in their lives are pretty aware of who those people are. They have often learned how to manage their relationship with the narcissist as best they can, as my partners told me when they prepared me to meet their parents. One of my partners did her best to avoid drawing her father’s attention; the other partner chose to keep contact with her mother to an absolute minimum.

How do people end up this way? Why would narcissism emerge as a personality trait, or even a personality disorder? Let’s see what the science says about the nature of narcissism.
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What Is Narcissism? (A Definition)​

Narcissism is first and foremost having an inflated sense of one’s importance in the world. People high in narcissism believe they are better and more important than other people, and just as importantly, they expect that the world will confirm this for them. Narcissism also involves expecting preferential treatment, difficulty seeing one’s negative traits, and a lack of compassion and empathy for other people (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
 
Perhaps my favorite example of narcissism in the present day comes from the internet, where it is always easy to find people behaving egregiously. In this case, I am thinking of a smaller forum on the website Reddit. This one is called “I’m the Main Character,” and it is a space in which people post media—typically videos—of people behaving as though they are the protagonist in the situation. Often, the “main character” is making an exceptionally large deal about a perceived slight, demanding special treatment, or clearly taking up resources that are meant to be shared with others.
 
Not all the people in those videos are narcissists, and I couldn’t actually tell you who is and who isn’t just from watching. When our emotions are running high, all of us tend to become more focused on our own needs. But for narcissists, this self-focus and lack of interest in others’ needs or perspectives pervades every moment of their lives. They can truly only rest for as long as their environments are signaling to them that they are indeed special—ideally, that they are the very best and brightest that ever there was.
 
A closely related trait within narcissism is poor awareness of one’s own emotions and difficulty in handling emotions when they come up (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010). Simply put, narcissists have minimal resources to cope with disappointment, frustration, sadness, loneliness, and so on; they also have the expectation that these feelings can and should be resolved as quickly as possible.
 
This is why narcissists make such a fuss and will double down or triple down on their needs: They simply cannot focus on anything else and cannot tolerate the idea that their life might involve a sustained negative feeling. After all, would somebody who is truly amazing ever have to feel bad? Their efforts to get what they think will restore their good mood and elevated sense of self are so powerful that many narcissists are effective in using manipulation or coercion to get the people around them to meet those unrealistic needs (Day et al., 2020).

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

When people consistently show a cluster of traits related to narcissism—elevated self-importance and arrogance, need for the admiration of others, entitlement, and a lack of empathy—they may be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). An effective shorthand for considering whether somebody might qualify for this diagnosis is to think in terms of the degree of grandiosity and entitlement that they show (Brown et al., 2009).
 
To have a personality disorder, somebody must show these unusual and often debilitating traits across many contexts and over a long period of time. A preteen girl who spends hours in front of the mirror and wants reassurance that she is attractive probably does not have NPD, whereas a middle-aged man whose entire family has learned to compliment him effusively every time he wears a new shirt or gets a haircut—because the alternative is having him sulk and disengage from the family for the next two days—might very well qualify for the diagnosis.​

Narcissistic Behavior

Narcissistic behavior often prioritizes immediately feeling better over securing long-term benefits (Holtzman et al., 2010). For example, a person may act impulsively to return the attention to themselves in social situations, whether this means saying something controversial, behaving provocatively, or suddenly seeming very aloof—anything that will draw the attention back in their direction.

Part of the reason narcissists behave this way is that they are typically fairly extroverted but also low in the trait of agreeableness (Paulhus, 2001). This makes them more likely than other people to behave aggressively or in ways that upset others in social situations, especially if their self-esteem is being threatened in the moment.

A really interesting finding regarding narcissists’ behavior is that they are aware of how differently they behave compared to others (Hart et al., 2018). However, since they are usually not very empathetic people, they tend to perceive their own behavior as strategic and logical, and they view those behaviors favorably when other people engage in them as well. I think this is a great example of how people with personality disorders can really see the world differently from the rest of humanity. Narcissists are focused on the outcomes of the behavior for the person behaving narcissistically; they just don’t attach much importance to the implications for everybody else who may be affected.​

Signs of Narcissism

The clearest sign of narcissism is a person consistently behaving in self-serving ways that are not considerate of others’ needs (Brown et al., 2009). Additional signs can include acting aggressively when their self-esteem is threatened, being emotionally volatile, seeking power over other people, and not showing much of a need to be close to other people.

Narcissistic Abuse

Narcissists, as we have already seen, can be aggressive when their sense of self is threatened, but more research has shown that they are aggressive in general (Kjærvik & Bushman, 2021). They can be described as being thin-skinned, but they are also prone to overreacting with violence when their egos are threatened. Furthermore, because narcissists feel less empathy for others than most people, they can easily engage in abusive behaviors in relationships (Day et al., 2020). Behaviors that others easily perceive as abusive in nature can seem simply pragmatic to narcissists.

Types of Narcissism​

Although all narcissists share the traits we have discussed so far, they can also be broken down into at least two types: grandiose narcissists and vulnerable narcissists (Miller et al., 2011). Grandiose narcissists primarily behave with aggression, grandiosity, and dominance, but vulnerable narcissists, by contrast, are more in touch with the negative feelings and sense of inadequacy that are the natural flip side of one thinking they must be incredibly important and special. Where a grandiose narcissist might bluster and yell and demand, a vulnerable narcissist will be more passive: sinking into shame, being hypersensitive to criticism, and seeking constant reassurance through less direct means. Other researchers would call these two types the “arrogant and entitled” or the “depressed and depleted” subtypes of narcissism (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010).
 
It is possible that narcissists also move back and forth between different kinds of narcissism (Miller et al., 2021). This might be because different contexts reinforce and buffer their self-esteem better than others, but at their core, narcissists actually have very little self-esteem. If they did, they would not work so hard to ensure that the people around them make them feel good about themselves. People with a solid sense of self-esteem can maintain it across relationships and life settings and even developmental stages, but people without that grounding can experience life as pretty wild and chaotic—hence the desire to make everyone else behave instead.​

Narcissism in Parents

As the personal experiences I related earlier would suggest, the children of narcissistic parents can grow up relatively well adjusted, but most of them have to grapple with having had a caregiver relationship in which they effectively had to parent their parent. Children are not supposed to be consistent or well behaved, so parenting can naturally be pretty challenging for a narcissist who craves order and the sense that they are always doing a good job. If you would like to know more about what a narcissistic parent looks like, you might find this video helpful:

Video: Narcissistic Parents

Narcissism in Relationships

The relatives of narcissists have a lot to say about what their relationships are like (Day et al., 2020). They report that their relatives are charming and self-important, arrogant and exploitative, and also insecure, hypersensitive, emotionally unstable, and prone to a victim mentality. Relatives of narcissists often are aware of the difficult life experiences that may have shaped their loved ones into narcissists, but they know that those experiences do not excuse the present-day behaviors of the narcissists.

Narcissism and Empathy

It seems that some narcissists are able to cognitively understand the pain and suffering of others, but they struggle more with actually feeling what others are feeling (Simard et al., 2022). This empathy gap seems to make it easier to act selfishly. Some research suggests that grandiose narcissists are the ones who struggle to even cognitively understand what others are feeling (Urbonaviciute & Hepper, 2020).

Narcissism and Gaslighting

Gaslighting is an abusive behavior in which one person makes another person question their own reality and experience—and this is something that narcissists readily do, because molding reality to their needs can seem more important than protecting the sanity of their loved ones (March et al., 2023).

Narcissism and Codependency

You can think of narcissists, although they often push people away and do not want to be intimate, as being very codependent with others (Farmer, 1999). This is because they rely on other people to regulate their moods and their sense of self. Contrary to whatever they might say, they feel lost without people around to boost their self-worth.

Quotes on Narcissism

  • “I think narcissists are endlessly watchable. The way they view the world and the way they interact within the world. They have no concept of their behavior or how it might be affecting other people. So comedically, it’s a very fun type of character to play. They are bulls in a china shop, twenty-four seven.” — Michael Showalter
  • “The lion is most handsome when looking for food.” — Rumi
  • "Narcissism is not about self love. It's a clinical trait that belies a deep sense of emptiness, low self-esteem, emotional detachment, self-loathing, extreme problems with intimacy." — Drew Pinsky
  • “Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life on his terms.” — Elizabeth Bowen
  • “A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all—but loving only himself.” — Criss Jami
  • “When we meet and fall into the gravitational pull of a narcissist, we are entering a significant life lesson that involves learning how to create boundaries, self-respect, and resilience. Through trial and error (and a lot of pain), our connection with narcissists teaches us the necessary lessons we need to become mature empaths.” ― Mateo Sol
  • "A narcissist’s criticism is their autobiography." ― M. Wakefield

Articles Related to Narcissism

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Narcissism

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Narcissism​

I hope this article has made some aspects of narcissism clearer for you. Psychologists continue to fiercely debate the finer points of narcissism (Miller et al., 2017), and each narcissist presents these traits in their own unique way. If you think there is somebody with narcissism in your life, you may want professional support in dealing with that relationship.

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