A stable and balanced self-concept is vital for healthy psychological functioning and social behavior. When people can take another's point of view, others tend to view and evaluate them more positively (Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005). Thus, as the ability to take the perspective of another person benefits the perspective takers themselves, this generates increased liking of them (Davis, 1983; Maner et al., 2002), and also results in flexible and efficient social interactions (Galinsky et al., 2005). Effective communication requires some degree of perspective taking (Gasiorek & Ebesu Hubbard, 2017), and anything that systematically lowers perspective taking may be a disadvantage in social interactions. It has been reported that narcissistic personality is the most likely trait to reduce perspective-taking motivation (Hepper, Hart, & Sedikides, 2014; Marissen, Deen, & Franken, 2012; Ritter et al., 2011).

The concept of narcissism refers to a vain preoccupation with the self (Purton et al., 2018). Narcissists are too self-focused to integrate others into their intrapsychic world with balance (Cooper, 1998); pathological narcissism is often characterized by a lack of both empathy and perspective taking (Rhodewalt & Morf, 1995). Although a negative association has been found between narcissism and empathy (Hepper et al., 2014; Wai & Tiliopoulos, 2012), few researchers have empirically explored the mechanism involved in this link (Winner & Nicholson, 2018). Thus, we examined the role of power in the relationship between narcissism and perspective taking.

Power is asymmetric control of valuable resources (Magee & Galinsky, 2008), and narcissism involves a sense of entitlement and fantasies of unlimited power (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Raskin and Terry (1988) reported that narcissism is associated with dominance and need for control. It has also been found that power is related to perspective taking and concern for others, as power reduces cognitive perspective taking (Tjosvold & Sagaria, 1978) and emotional adaptation (Overbeck, Neale, & Govan, 2010). Thus, in comparison with nonnarcissists, narcissists’ psychological need for power and control may both drive their weaker focus on others and lessen the attention they pay to others’ perspectives. Thus, we included need for control as a mediating variable in the relationship between narcissism and perspective taking.

In addition, recent researchers have focused on the role of self-esteem in distinguishing between narcissists who display relatively adaptive functioning (e.g., grandiosity and authority) and relatively maladaptive functioning (e.g., exploitativeness and vulnerability). For example, Crowe, Sleep, Carter, Campbell, and Miller (2018) found that high self-esteem is strongly related to the adaptive characteristics of narcissists. Thus, we included self-esteem as a control variable to investigate the relationship between narcissism and perspective taking, and proposed the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Narcissism will negatively affect perspective taking when self-esteem is controlled for (total effect).
Hypothesis 2: Narcissism will positively affect need for control.
Hypothesis 3: Need for control will negatively affect perspective taking.
Hypothesis 4: Need for control will mediate the relationship between narcissism and perspective taking when self-esteem is controlled for (indirect effect).

Method

Participants and Procedure

Data were collected from 178 students at a midwestern university in the US. Participants were 85 men (48%) and 93 women (52%) aged in their 20s (M = 20.0 years, SD = 1.9). We recruited participants by giving them a survey, Presenting Yourself, in exchange for research credit. Data collection was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university, and participants first signed a consent form and then received a debriefing explanation of the purpose of the study after completion.

Measures

Perspective taking and empathic concern. To assess empathy we used nine perspective-taking items and six empathic concern items from the four subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983). Participants assess the items on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A sample item for perspective taking is “When I’m upset at someone, I usually try to put myself in their shoes for a while.” One item was deleted from the nine original perspective-taking items to meet the necessary internal consistency criteria (corrected item–total correlations of .40 or higher for retention). Cronbach’s alpha was .83 for the remaining eight items. The deleted item was “If I’m sure I’m right about something, I don’t waste much time listening to other people’s arguments.” As the reliability of the six empathic concern items was unacceptably low (α = .65), we did not include empathic concern in any further analysis.

Narcissism. The Margolis–Thomas Measure of Narcissism (Margolis & Thomas, 1980) contains 60 items, but we used the shorter 24-item version (Mullins & Kopelman; 1988), which has acceptable internal reliability and construct validity. A sample paired item from which participants choose the statement that better describes them is “I tend to exaggerate my achievement so others will accept and respect me (A)” or “I try not to exaggerate my achievements but sometimes my pride appears as bragging (B).” The choice of A over B is regarded as indicative of narcissism. The internal reliability for the Margolis–Thomas Measure of Narcissism (α = .74) was appropriate according to the Kuder–Richardson 20 coefficients for dichotomous data. Items are summed to yield a total score ranging from 1 to 22, with higher scores indicating higher narcissism.

Need for control. Need for control was measured with five items from Levine (1992), rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Sample items are “I try to take charge of things when I am with people” and “I try to have others do things I want done.” Cronbach’s alpha was .82.

Self-esteem. Self-esteem was measured with the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). Participants rate the items on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Sample items are “I feel that I’m a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others” and “I feel that I do not have much to be proud of” (reverse-scored). Cronbach’s alpha for the items was .85.

Results

Preliminary Analysis

We conducted a correlation analysis for all the variables before testing the model. Results are presented in Table 1. Narcissism was statistically significantly correlated with need for control and perspective taking. Gender was significantly correlated with only for need for control, showing than men (vs. women) scored higher on need for control.

Model and Hypothesis Testing

We used Hayes’ (2017) PROCESS macro for SPSS to generate confidence intervals for the indirect mediation effect. Using bootstrapping analysis with 5,000 resamples, we checked the moderated mediation effects of gender and need for control. Because gender did not have a moderating effect, we then tested the mediating model with the covariate of self-esteem (PROCESS Model 4). The total, direct, and indirect effect analyses for the mediating model and dependent variable model, as generated by PROCESS, are shown in Table 2.

Both the mediating variable model (Hypothesis 2), F(2, 175) = 21.35, R² = .20, p < .001, and the dependent variable model (Hypotheses 1 and 3), F(3, 174) = 7.49, R² = .11, p < .001, were statistically significant after self-esteem was controlled for. There was a significant indirect effect of narcissism on perspective taking via need for control (Hypothesis 4).

We found that narcissism significantly decreased perspective taking, showing a significant total effect. Hypothesis 1 was, therefore, supported. In the mediation model, narcissism significantly and positively affected need for control. Hypothesis 2 was, thus, supported. Need for control significantly and negatively affected perspective taking. Hypothesis 3 was, thus, supported. When need for control was considered as a mediator (see Table 2), the direct effect of narcissism on perspective taking was smaller than the total effect, indicating a significant indirect effect. Because the direct effect was still significant, need for control partially mediated the relationship between narcissism and perspective taking (see Figure 1). Hypothesis 4 was, therefore, supported.

Discussion

We found that narcissism had a direct negative effect on perspective taking when self-esteem was controlled for, and need for control partially mediated the relationship between narcissism and perspective taking. In other words, participants who scored higher for narcissistic personality tended to have less motivation to take others’ perspectives, a tendency that was strengthened because narcissists are more driven by need for control. Our results support previous findings linking narcissistic traits to perspective taking (Raskin & Terry, 1988; Ritter et al., 2011), and also replicate Overbeck et al.’s (2010) finding that need for control reduces perspective taking in narcissists. The strong association between narcissism and need for control indicates the origin of lack of empathy; for narcissists, lack of empathy is partly attributable to their cognitive empathy, that is, perspective taking, which explains deficits, rather than inability, in motivation (Ritter et al., 2011).

In terms of theoretical contributions, our study results help to explain why having a narcissistic personality is inevitably disadvantageous in social interactions. The inability to understand others, which is the focal ability in interpersonal relationships and empathetic communication, may occur partially because of narcissists’ drive for power. We confirmed the cognitive shortcomings of narcissists’ empathy and showed that narcissists, who have an inflated self-image, are obsessed with feelings of entitlement, and are driven by need for control, leave little room for others. The bridging role of need for power deepens understanding of why narcissists cannot put themselves in another’s shoes.

From a practical viewpoint, our results show that need for control is an essential factor in understanding narcissism. As narcissists have an unstable self-concept owing to the need for power or control, this assumes a one-up/one-down or zero-sum worldview. For the narcissist, getting ahead is more important than getting along (Bradlee & Emmons, 1992). Our finding partially shows that narcissists fail to respond empathically because of the power concept that they hold. Campbell and Foster (2007) found this tendency was evident in narcissists with excessive agentic (vs. communal) thinking. Thus, if practitioners wish to help narcissists improve their perspective-taking motivation and empathetic communication, they should first check the narcissists’ level of need for control. By participating in interventions to address this, narcissists can redirect their self-view by adjusting their other-view mental representations, and thus increase their empathy (Hepper et al., 2014). A healthy mind often results from an individual having a sense of merged or interconnected identity rather than being power driven (Maner et al., 2002). Thus, to achieve healthy psychological functioning of narcissists, the need to share their identity, instead of focusing on control, should be emphasized.

There are some limitations in this study. First, narcissism is a multifaceted construct, and narcissistic disorder has been defined as having five (or more) symptoms out of nine descriptions (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In an empirical research setting with a multidimensional construct, because each facet of narcissism is replicated in each subscale, it is difficult to decide whether to sum the score for each facet across all subscales, or to treat each facet as a distinct feature in each subscale. Thus, the narcissism measure that we used necessitates caution in drawing conclusions on specific narcissistic traits, such as entitlement, exhibitionism, leadership, and exploitativeness. Second, as we used a self-report survey, we could not avoid common method bias issues, such as social desirability, response bias owing to item order, and generalizability limitations; further, time-based causality cannot be claimed. Our results are only inferences based on theoretical and statistical assumptions. Third, as the sample comprised students from one university in the US, future researchers should include participant groups from more varied contexts (e.g., students at primary and secondary school levels, and older adults) to strengthen the external validity of our findings.

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Hyoung-Kil Kang, Department of Physical Education, Kyungnam University, Kyungnamdaehak-ro 7, Masanhappo-gu, Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-do 51767, Republic of Korea. Email: [email protected]