The cycle of narcissism and ostracisation

Those with narcissistic tendencies are often viewed as being a cause of other people's suffering. In the past few years, there's been a growing trend of labelling those who've wronged someone as a 'narcissist', and as such, commonly held definitions of narcissism have become somewhat fuzzy, often reducing 'narcissists' down to a caricature.

One of the things that popular understanding of narcissism often overlooks is the fact that those high in narcissistic traits suffer too. Not only do they often find themselves longing for unobtainable levels of admiration and recognition, but according to recent research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they're also more susceptible to feeling ostracised by other people.

This finding, from a team led by Christiane Büttner at the University of Basel, comes from a series of studies. In the first, the researchers analysed data from a nationally representative survey of German households. They looked specifically at data on 1,592 people who had answered questions about their perceptions of social exclusion, or ostracism, and also completed a measure of grandiose narcissism. (People with this type of narcissism score highly on the traits of dominance and entitlement, and have a strong desire to be admired, as well as a need for recognition.) This work revealed that those with higher levels of narcissism reported being ostracised more frequently.

The team then studied 323 American adults, who completed a narcissism questionnaire and reported on how many incidences of ostracism — such as being ignored or excluded from a conversation — they had experienced in the past two months. These participants then used a phone app to record incidences of ostracism over the next fortnight. The results showed that those with higher levels of narcissistic traits reported being more frequently ostracised both in the past and over the two-week sampling period.

In a subsequent experiment, the team explored whether such people are more likely to feel that ambiguous social situations are instances of ostracism. A total of 265 people read hypothetical conversations, which they were asked to imagine involved them and someone else. In a conversation with 'a friend' for example, the friend forgets that the participant had attended a concert with them. The results showed that in these scenarios, people with high levels of narcissistic traits were indeed more likely to perceive that they had been ignored or excluded.

Of course, those high in narcissistic traits may be more likely to be actually shunned because of how narcissism is perceived; in another study, in which participants were asked to use purported personality test information to choose people to work with on a task, this was borne out. Potential co-workers who were described as being relatively high, rather than low, in narcissistic traits were more likely to be rejected.

In an attempt to explore this finding in a more realistic setting, the researchers then created a student networking situation, in which participants watched videos of other students introducing themselves. The students in these videos had all completed a grandiose narcissism questionnaire; some had high levels of narcissistic traits, while others had scored lowly.

The participants were asked who they'd like to approach in a chat. They also rated how much they wanted to interact with this person, and how much they wanted to ignore them. The results showed that students in the videos who'd scored highly on the 'rivalry' facet of grandiose narcissism — representative of a tendency to derogate others to protect their own grandiose self-image — were less appealing, with the participants being more likely to want to ignore them.

Finally, the researchers analysed 14 years worth of data from a nationally representative study in New Zealand, which included measures of narcissism and reported ostracism. They found that changes in levels of perceived ostracism were followed by changes in levels of narcissism one year on, and vice versa. This suggests that there's a cycle of effects, with ostracism leading to higher levels of narcissistic traits, which makes this person more likely to be ostracised and to perceive more instances of exclusion, which then feed back into narcissistic traits, and so on. (It's worth noting that the purpose of social exclusion — to get the excluded person to see the error of their ways, and to change for the better — fails in this case. "Instead," the team writes, "ostracism seems to solidify narcissistic traits over time.")

Research suggests that grandiose narcissism can develop early, even in children as young as eight. So, the team writes, the finding of a narcissism/ostracism vicious cycle makes it especially important to develop interventions to combat narcissism in schools, as well as workplaces.

Read the paper in full: 
Büttner, C. M., Rudert, S. C., Albath, E. A., Sibley, C. G., & Greifeneder, R. (2025). Narcissists' experience of ostracism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000547

Want the latest in psychological research, straight to your inbox?
Sign up to Research Digest's free weekly newsletter.