Both the frequency and the severity of narcissism have seen an upward trend across time (Twenge & Foster, 2010; Twenge et al., 2008). This gradual increase, which Barry et al. (2015) observed in a study conducted over a 24-year period, can lead to a society dominated by individualism and extensive self-focus as narcissists function in an interpersonal world where there can be only one winner: the narcissistic individual themself (Miller et al., 2021). Narcissists demand respect and attention; on the other hand, they withhold the same respect and attention from others (Miller et al., 2021). Narcissism can be further characterized into adaptive and maladaptive forms. The three Es (entitlement, exhibitionism, and exploitativeness) combine to form maladaptive narcissism, which has been positively linked to traits like neuroticism, depression, anxiety, aggression, impulsive buying, delinquency, inconsistency between actual and ideal self, low empathy, low self-esteem (Yu et al., 2019), high work stress, and burnout (Von Känel et al., 2017). Conversely, adaptive narcissism, which is the positive form of narcissism, comprises leadership/authority and self-sufficiency, and tends to infer opposite or no associations with these traits (Yu et al., 2019). Thus, of the two distinct types of grandiose narcissism, maladaptive narcissism is the problematic form as it is challenging to the individual’s well-being and interpersonal relationships (Barry & Kauten, 2014). The gradual rise in narcissism has been comparatively higher in the case of maladaptive narcissism, specifically pertaining to its entitlement and exploitativeness dimensions. Trzesniewski et al. (2008) found that although scores for the four dimensions of authority, exhibitionism, superiority, and vanity decreased, scores for entitlement, exploitativeness, and self-sufficiency dimensions increased. Therefore, it is imperative to study the maladaptive form of narcissism from the perspective of its origin, its association with other traits, and methods to curb or control it.

Attachment patterns or styles are formed during early childhood and shape the child’s personality as an adult (Bowlby, 1960). The relationship that the primary caregiver—who is usually the child’s mother—has with their child forms a base for all subsequent interpersonal relationships and interactions of that child, even after the child becomes an adult (Salter Ainsworth et al., 1978). Most individuals develop a secure attachment style because of their caregiver’s emotional availability and appropriate reactions to the child’s attachment behavior (Sable, 2008). Emotional unavailability or inappropriate reactions by the primary caregiver lead to the formation of an insecure attachment pattern, which can be further categorized into anxious attachment and avoidant attachment types (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Individuals who possess a highly anxious attachment style are preoccupied with their need to feel secure in their interpersonal relationships while they are actually insecure, so this leads to clingy behavior, anxiety, and obsession about having good relationships with others (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). In contrast, people with a highly avoidant attachment style strive for independence and completely evade attachment with everyone because of their low self-worth (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Such individuals need intimacy and emotional support but are also fearful of these (Yunger et al., 2005). Anxious and avoidant attachment both lead to behavioral problems (Yunger et al., 2005) and narcissism (Ahmadi et al., 2013). Attachment patterns develop in early childhood (Colmer et al., 2011), and individual differences pertaining to narcissism are observed in middle childhood (Thomaes et al., 2013). Thus, it is possible that attachment behavior or style may be a precursor of narcissism.

Narcissists form insecure attachment patterns in their interpersonal interactions (Reis et al., 2021). Grandiose narcissists usually score higher than other people do on anxious attachment (Reis et al., 2021) and avoidant attachment (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003), but there is conflicting evidence as well, where no associations were seen between anxious or avoidant attachment and grandiose narcissism (Smolewska & Dion, 2005). A challenge for narcissistic individuals is their inability to feel empathy toward others, which leads to problems in their interpersonal relationships (Lubit, 2002). Our aim in the current study was to establish that the maladaptive form of narcissism originates from insecure attachment, as both maladaptive narcissism and insecure attachment are problematic in nature and have negative associations with empathy.

Cognitive empathy is a person’s capacity to infer and comprehend the feelings and experiences of others, and their awareness and understanding of emotions that are felt by others (Decety, 2011). Affective empathy refers to a person’s emotional responses to others’ negative experiences (Davis, 1980). Both affective and cognitive empathy share negative associations with narcissism (Urbonaviciute & Hepper, 2020). The presence of a narcissistic individual in the family (Day et al., 2022), in the workplace, or among peers (Lubit, 2002) has a major impact on the nature of those relationships. For example, narcissistic bosses tend to exploit their subordinates and undermine their feelings, which leads to counterproductive work behavior and stress (Grijalva & Newman, 2015). Similarly, a narcissistic spouse will tend to show high self-entitlement and low empathy toward their partner, which often results in abusive behavior, depression (Day et al., 2022), marital discord, and divorce (Fatik, 2022). A lack of empathy in narcissists can result in their indulgence in behaviors that are harmful to the environment; thus, narcissists may have a negative impact on planet Earth because they lack empathy for their neighborhood as well as for other people (Durvasula, 2019).

Cognitive and affective empathy are mostly measured by using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983). Cognitive empathy is measured by the perspective-taking and fantasy subscales of the IRI, and affective empathy is measured via the empathic-concern and personal-distress subscales. Because of the limitations of the IRI, Jolliffe and Farrington (2006) developed the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), and Carré et al. (2013) further validated the scale with adults (BES-A) and proposed a three-factor model, with the reasoning that there are three dimensions of empathy: cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection. Emotional contagion is the triggering of emotions and behavior in oneself that are similar to those of the persons with whom one is interacting (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006). It is the first step in the empathy experience (Lamm et al., 2008), as this is a bottom-up process (Decety & Svetlova, 2012). Emotional disconnection refers to protecting oneself from distress, pain, and huge emotional influence (Lamm et al., 2007). In contrast to emotional contagion, it is a top-down, inhibitory, and regulatory process used to protect the self from unsustainable emotions (Carré et al, 2013). Cognitive empathy in the BES-A is positively related to fantasy and perspective taking in the IRI, emotional contagion in the BES-A is positively associated with empathic concern in the IRI, and emotional disconnection in the BES-A is negatively linked to personal distress in the IRI (Carré et al., 2013).

Individuals high in anxious and avoidant attachment are also low in cognitive and affective empathy (Ardenghi et al., 2020; Britton & Fuendeling, 2005). Similarly, entitlement, exploitativeness, and exhibitionism, which are the maladaptive dimensions of narcissism, have significant negative associations with empathetic concern and theory of mind (Vonk et al., 2013). Theory of mind is the ability to predict behavior by inferring the intentions, knowledge, and mental states of oneself and others (Premack & Woodruff, 1978), and it is linked to cognitive empathy (Bensalah et al., 2016). Entitlement and exploitativeness also have a negative relationship with perspective taking, and exhibitionism is positively associated with personal distress (Vonk et al., 2013). A major point of focus of our research was to study the relationship between the maladaptive form of narcissism and empathy, and to uncover whether maladaptive narcissists are able to experience empathy. We used the three-factor model proposed by Carré et al. (2013) to measure empathy, as emotional contagion and emotional disconnection are very different from each other and need to be taken as separate constructs.

Since the maladaptive dimensions of narcissism are negatively linked to empathy (Vonk et al., 2013), it can be inferred that maladaptive narcissists are low in empathy. In this paper we wanted to study if it is possible to increase empathy in narcissists. Taking part in a program designed to develop perspective taking and mindfulness has been linked to an increase in empathy in individuals (Hepper et al., 2014; Joss et al., 2020). We aimed to find out if perspective taking and mindfulness can cause an increase in empathy in maladaptive narcissists.

Perspective taking is the ability to look at things from the point of view of others (Davis, 1983). It is a temporary change and the perspective taker does not feel compassion or affinity, nor do they experience emotional identification (Davis, 1983). Even though perspective taking is reduced in persons with high avoidant attachment (Ardenghi et al., 2020), narcissism (Lee & Kang, 2020), and emotional disconnection (Carré et al., 2013), perspective taking has a strong positive relationship with cognitive empathy. In our study we examined the role that perspective taking plays in the empathic experience of narcissists.

Mindfulness refers to individuals’ ability to pay full attention to their immediate thoughts, feelings, and perceptions in a nonreactive manner and without forming judgments about the stimuli around them (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Mindfulness shares a positive association with cognitive empathy (Vilaverde et al., 2020) as well as affective empathy (Matiz et al., 2020). Taking part in a mindfulness intervention has also been shown to increase empathy in individuals (Joss et al., 2020). Thus, we set out to find out if mindfulness can increase empathy in maladaptive narcissists.

After reviewing the existing literature, it can be concluded that researchers have not yet fully explored narcissism concerning its maladaptive and adaptive forms. Yu et al. (2019) reported finding diverse evidence that adaptive and maladaptive components of narcissism are distinct, but the trend of studying grandiose narcissism without differentiating has been observed. Most previous studies on narcissism examined its effects, with a limited number investigating the antecedent variables or predictors of narcissism. Although there are many studies on empathy and its linkage with other related variables, including narcissism, the three-factor model of empathy (Carré et al., 2013) has not been explored extensively. As each of these three factors is distinct, we studied each of the components of empathy independently.

 

Research Model

Method

Participants and Procedure

The participants in our study were 300 randomly selected student volunteers (150 men and 150 women) from universities in Punjab, India. They came from various regions of India and their ages ranged between 20 and 27 years (M = 21.71, SD = 1.46). In India, universities are categorized into two types—government and private. We selected one university for each category through simple random sampling. The sample consisted of 75 men and 75 women per university and included students from bachelor’s and master’s courses, but did not include doctoral students. Each student completed the self-report measures individually at different times under the supervision of one of the researchers. They signed an informed consent form before taking part, and after the study was complete they received a debriefing explanation about the content and objectives of the study. As thanks for their participation each participant at the private university was given snack coupons worth INR 70 (USD 0.85); at the government university, the participants were each given INR 50 (USD 0.61) cash and snacks worth INR 20 (USD 0.24).

Measures

Attachment

The Revised Adult Attachment Scale (Close Relationships Version) by Collins (1996) was applied for measuring anxious attachment (six items, e.g., “I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like”) and avoidant attachment (12 items, e.g., “I find it difficult to allow myself to depend on others”). Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 = not at all characteristic of me and 5 = very characteristic of me. In this study Cronbach’s alpha was .77, which is higher than the recommended cut-off of .70 (Wu et al., 2004). The Close Relationships Version of the scale was used because romantic relationships before marriage are not a very common occurrence in India.

Maladaptive Narcissism

We used the 40-item, self-report Narcissistic Personality Inventory-40 (Raskin & Terry, 1988) to measure three dimensions of maladaptive narcissism: exhibitionism (seven items), exploitativeness (five items), and entitlement (six items). The sum total of these three dimensions is taken as the score for maladaptive narcissism. Participants choose which of two alternative statements they identify with more (A or B), one of which is a narcissistic statement (Raskin & Hall, 1979). Each narcissistic statement that the participants select increases their score on the corresponding subscale of narcissism by one point. The subscales of maladaptive narcissism consist of forced-choice items. Examples of items are “A. I get upset when people don’t notice how I look when I go out in public; B. I don’t mind blending into the crowd when I go out in public” (exhibitionism); “A. Sometimes I tell good stories; B. Everybody likes to hear my stories” (exploitativeness); and “A. I insist upon getting the respect that is due me; B. I usually get the respect that I deserve” (entitlement). Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .60.

Perspective Taking

We used the seven-item perspective-taking subscale of the IRI (Davis, 1980) to measure perspective taking. Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from A = does not describe me well to E = describes me very well. A sample item is “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.” Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .62.

Mindfulness

The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire by Baer et al. (2006) was applied to measure mindfulness. It consists of 39 statements, such as “I believe some of my thoughts are abnormal or bad and I shouldn't think that way.” Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale: 1 = never or very rarely true, 2 = rarely true, 3 = sometimes true, 4 = often true, and 5 = very often or always true. A total score is obtained by summing the participant’s scores for all the statements. Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .81.

Empathy

The 20-item Basic Empathy Scale (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006) was applied to measure empathy. Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree with the statement. We selected Carré’s three-factor model, which has been validated with an adult population (Carré et al., 2013). The three factors are emotional contagion (six items, e.g., “I get frightened when I watch characters in a good scary movie”), cognitive empathy (eight items, e.g., “I can often understand how people are feeling even before they tell me”), and emotional disconnection (six items, e.g., “I don’t become sad when I see other people crying”). In the study by Carré et al. Cronbach’s alphas were .82 for emotional disconnection, .69 for cognitive empathy, and .72 for emotional contagion.

Data Analysis

Anxious attachment and avoidant attachment were the exogenous variables. Maladaptive narcissism, perspective taking, mindfulness, cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection were the endogenous variables. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and structural equation modeling were used to study the links between the variables of our study. The statistical packages used were SPSS 25.0 and Amos 23.0.

Results

To determine the links between the variables of our study, we conducted a Pearson product-moment correlation analysis with SPSS (see Table 1).

We analyzed the structural model of anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, maladaptive narcissism, perspective taking, mindfulness, and the three types of empathy (cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection). Our model satisfied the goodness-of-fit criteria. The results are presented in Table 2.

The goals of our study were to determine the relationship of anxious attachment and avoidant attachment with maladaptive narcissism and to ascertain the links between maladaptive narcissism and cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection, both directly and also indirectly through perspective taking and mindfulness. We tested our hypotheses via structural equation modeling using Amos 23.0. Our data fitted the model well. The results are presented in Table 3.

As shown in the table, Hypotheses 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13 were supported by the results of the structural equation modeling analysis, but Hypotheses 3, 4, 5, and 9 were not supported. Both anxious attachment (H1) and avoidant attachment (H2) significantly predicted maladaptive narcissism. Maladaptive narcissism was negatively linked to mindfulness (H10). Mindfulness was positively linked to emotional contagion (H12) and cognitive empathy (H11) but negatively linked to emotional disconnection (H13). Thus, mindfulness was established as a mediating variable between maladaptive narcissism and the three types of empathy, that is, cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection, whereas perspective taking acted as a mediating variable between maladaptive narcissism and cognitive empathy as well as between maladaptive narcissism and emotional contagion, as maladaptive narcissism was negatively associated with perspective taking (H6). Perspective taking was positively linked to emotional contagion (H8) and cognitive empathy (H7).

Discussion

We studied the predictive relationship of anxious and avoidant attachment with maladaptive narcissism, along with the direct links between maladaptive narcissism and cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection (three types of empathy), in addition to their indirect links through perspective taking and mindfulness. The results reveal that anxious attachment and avoidant attachment are significant predictors of maladaptive narcissism. Further, mindfulness acts as a mediator between maladaptive narcissism and each of the three types of empathy, and perspective taking mediates the relationships between maladaptive narcissism and cognitive empathy, and between maladaptive narcissism and emotional contagion.

Theoretical Contributions

We reached the following conclusions: Participants who score high on anxious attachment also score high on maladaptive narcissism. This result is consistent with previous findings where anxious attachment has been found to be positively related to each of the dimensions of maladaptive narcissism: exhibitionism (Lyons et al., 2013), exploitativeness (Anindita, 2022; Lyons et al., 2013), and entitlement (Gibson-Beverly & Schwartz, 2008; Lyons et al., 2013). Participants with an elevated avoidant attachment score also score high on maladaptive narcissism. This result is in agreement with the research of Anindita (2022), who found that all the subscales of maladaptive narcissism are positively related to avoidant attachment. When a child feels insecure and faces rejection from their primary caregiver, this may lead to the formation of negative self-concept and a fragile ego, which may take the form of narcissism in adulthood. Avoidance is used to protect oneself from being rejected by others (Pistole, 1995).

We found that maladaptive narcissism is not directly related to any of the three types of empathy. However, an indirect effect is observed through perspective taking and mindfulness, as maladaptive narcissism is negatively related to perspective taking, which, in turn, is positively related to cognitive empathy and emotional contagion. Similar results have been recorded in previous studies for the dimensions of maladaptive narcissism. Watson and Morris (1991) found that perspective taking is negatively associated with entitlement, and Vonk et al. (2013) found a negative relationship between perspective taking and both exploitativeness and exhibitionism. Narcissists have perceptual biases toward others that influence what they pay attention to and what they remember, which may lead to low socioemotional cognition (Giacomin, 2019). Scholars have also found positive connections between perspective taking and cognitive empathy (Carré et al., 2013), and between perspective taking and emotional contagion (Reddy et al., 2022). Perspective taking is considered a part of cognitive empathy (Davis, 1980) and a precursor to empathic concern (Warren, 2018), which are similar in nature to emotional contagion (Carré et al., 2013). Our results do not show a significant association of perspective taking with emotional disconnection. A plausible explanation is that when a person experiences perspective taking and affective empathy, the regions of the brain that are activated are distinct from each other (Kanske et al., 2015).

Similarly, we found that maladaptive narcissism and the three forms of empathy are related through mindfulness: There is a negative relationship between maladaptive narcissism and mindfulness, which, in turn, is positively associated with emotional contagion and cognitive empathy and negatively associated with emotional disconnection. These results are in line with those of Fatfouta and Heinze (2022), who found a negative association between mindfulness and the exploitativeness and entitlement dimensions of maladaptive narcissism. Mindfulness entails attending to the present moment with all senses (Baer, 2018), whereas narcissists are intently and exclusively focused on themselves and on fulfilling their own needs (Konrath et al., 2009); hence, they are unable to pay attention to their surroundings.

We also found positive associations between mindfulness and both cognitive empathy and emotional contagion, and a negative relationship between mindfulness and emotional disconnection. Researchers have previously reported finding that mindfulness is positively associated with cognitive empathy (Vilaverde et al., 2020), and that mindfulness increases empathic concern (Berry et al., 2018). Mindfulness increases kindness and care for others as well as enhancing cognitive and social–emotional skills (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2015).

Both anxious and avoidant attachment significantly predict maladaptive narcissism. Our results establish mindfulness as a mediating variable between maladaptive narcissism and all three types of empathy (i.e., cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection), whereas perspective taking acts as a mediator between maladaptive narcissism and two of the types of empathy (cognitive empathy and emotional contagion). Through perspective taking and mindfulness, indirect relationships are formulated between maladaptive narcissism and the three types of empathy. Thus, we can conclude that maladaptive narcissists may feel empathy if they undergo perspective taking and mindfulness meditation.

Practical Implications

Managers of institutions can introduce exercises in mindfulness meditation and perspective taking for their employees. Parents and caregivers, as well as school and university teachers, can also extend these practices to their children, wards, and students. Future generations can benefit the most from our study if parents can help to reduce narcissism by making their children feel safe and loved, so that they can develop a secure attachment style.

Limitations

The main limitations of our study are that we used self-report measures, so that the presence of issues like social desirability and limited generalizability cannot be excluded. Further, we studied the maladaptive form of narcissism only, and did not compare the results with adaptive narcissism or covert/hypersensitive narcissism.

Directions for Future Research

Because currently there is no exclusive measure of maladaptive narcissism, future studies could focus on formulating a specifically built measure. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory that we used is a very good measure of narcissism, but out of its 40 items, only 18 are designed to measure maladaptive narcissism. The other items are designed to measure adaptive narcissism, superiority, and vanity. Thus, a tool that measures only maladaptive narcissism may be less time consuming as it will potentially have fewer items.

Like maladaptive narcissism, adaptive narcissism can be studied by researchers to obtain comparative results. Researchers may also study the effects of interventions like mindfulness meditation and taking the perspective of the other person to increase empathy in narcissists. Behavioral or projective measures may be used in future research to minimize the likelihood of social desirability influencing the results.

This research, which was part of Puneet Virk’s doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Santha Kumari, was supported by a fellowship awarded to Puneet Virk by the University Grants Commission, Government of India.

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Puneet Virk, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, P.O. Box 32, Bhadson Road, Patiala, Punjab 147004, India. Email: [email protected]