Social decision making in narcissism: Reduced generosity and increased retaliation are driven by alterations in perspective-taking and anger

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created by theconstellinguist on 14/10/2024 at 04:04 UTC*

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Social decision making in narcissism: Reduced generosity and increased retaliation are driven by alterations in perspective-taking and anger

• *Pasteable Citation:** Böckler, A., Sharifi, M., Kanske, P., Dziobek, I., & Singer, T. (2017). Social decision making in narcissism: Reduced generosity and increased retaliation are driven by alterations in perspective-taking and anger. *Personality and Individual Differences*, *104*, 1-7.

• *High narcissism is related to lower generosity. This is because of lowered ability to correctly take the perspective of another. They also were more likely to punish as well, as they experienced more anger and took excessive aggressive action when in narcissistic injury not found in non-narcissists in equivalent psychological injury. Hence, narcissists face excessive difficulties in the social world and instead of acknowledging and becoming introspective about their lower than normal abilities to have correct perspective taking of another, they will instead simply retaliate from anger. This may come off as aggressive disability denialism, when in fact they genuinely have an unsustainably inflated self-construct where they have normal if not above average empathy which they do not in fact have (and that very excess of actionable anger is a direct product of that not found in those who do have these qualities).**

1. High narcissism scores were related to lower generosity, especially when this could result in being punished. This maladaptive behavior was fully mediated by reduced perspective-taking abilities in narcissism. Also, narcissism scores predicted higher levels of punishment behavior, driven by higher levels of experienced anger. Hence, the difficulties narcissists face in interactions may be due to their reduced perspective-taking skills and resulting reduced generosity as well as enhanced anger-based retaliation behavior.

• *Narcissism is characterized by enhanced feelings of grandiosity and entitlement, impairments in interpersonal functioning, less likability (they often do not register this however as it is not congruent with their inflated self-construct), less committed and satisfactory relationships, and negative impacts on others and society.**

1. Narcissism – both on the sub-clinical and on the pathological level – is characterized by enhanced feelings of grandiosity and entitlement as well as by impairments in interpersonal functioning (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Campbell, Bush, Brunell, & Shelton, 2005; Given-Wilson, Ilwain, & Warburton, 2011; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). Narcissists are considered less likable by others (Back et al., 2013), are less often engaged in committed and satisfactory relationships (Campbell, 1999; Campbell, Foster, & Finkel, 2002; Carroll, 1987; Paulhus, 1998), and their behavior negatively impacts on others and on society (Barry, Kerig, Stellwagen, & Barry, 2011; Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006; Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, Elliot, & Gregg, 2002).

• *As narcissism becomes disturbingly more prevalent, it is critical to study the nature and causes of its concerning increase.**

1. Considering the increase of narcissistic traits in young generations (Cai, Kwan, & Sedikides, 2012; Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008), a more comprehensive understanding of social decision making and the underlying impairments in narcissism is crucial.

• *Narcissism is related to reduced prosocial decision making. Narcissists have lower ethical standards, volunteer less for the sake of others, and invest less time to help others.**

1. Concerning the first question, psychological research suggests that (sub-clinical) narcissism is related to reduced prosocial decision making. Narcissists report lower moral and ethical standards (Antes et al., 2007; Brown, Sautter, Littvay, Sautter, & Bearnes, 2010; Cooper & Pullig, 2013), volunteer less for the sake of others, and invest less time to help others (Brunell, Tumblin, & Buelow, 2014; Lannin, Guyll, Krizan, & Madon, 2014). :

• *Similar to how a narcissist will engage in more compliance with ethical standards if they view someone as rich or powerful enough to do what they consider to be effective retaliation, they are more likely to give more. This is relatively normal across all humans, non-narcissistic or narcissistic, although narcissists are more likely to discount, ignore and show disproportional contempt towards those they perceive without power and more likely to overfocus, sometimes to a notoriously cloying and abrasive degree, on those with perceived power. For those with a flexible position across the power spectrum, this is extremely disturbing, if not morally revolting, to witness.**

1. First, people adjust generous or cooperative behavior to whether their interaction partners can respond (e.g., by punishing unfair distribution choices; Fehr & Gachter, 2002; Güth, 1995; Spitzer, Fischbacher, Herrnberger, Gron, & Fehr, 2007; Steinbeis, Bernhardt, & Singer, 2012). Put simply, people give more when others have the option to retaliate, a behavioral tendency that has been termed strategic giving (e.g., Steinbeis et al., 2012).

• *Similarly, non-narcissists and narcissists both can retaliate from anger. The difference is the non-narcissist will enforce a norm with backing in reality, aka, actual strong popular support from autonomous agents who are in a position of respected and empowered agency, versus a narcissist who will enforce their norm without precedent, research, or strong popular support simply because their entitlement and narcissistic rage compelled them into a position of anger, usually following narcissistic injury. Essentially, their norm is “don’t injure my ego and my entitlement to my self-construct” whereas non-narcissists is “don’t violate established precedent, research, and widely agreed upon norms by autonomous and empowered agents”. The former must be subsumed to the latter in prosocial, non-narcissistic society in a way the narcissist’s entitlement doesn’t agree with, no matter how absurd, embarrassing or unbelievable it is.**

1. Second, people tend to punish those who behave selfishly (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004; Fehr & Gachter, 2002; McAuliffe, Jordan, & Warneken, 2015). This behavior can reflect anger-based retaliation, but also a tendency to enforce social norms (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004; Fehr & Gachter, 2002; McCall, Steinbeis, Ricard, & Singer, 2014; Sanfey, Rilling, Aronson, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2003; Sigmund, 2007).

• *Given narcissists have increased anger and increased entitlement, what they may view as the enforcement of the adapted norm (no consequence, erasure of objective facts that don’t inflate/flatter their internal self-construct) is actually** **the enforcement of the maladapted narcissistic norm where they feel entitled to no consequences, hiding of their criminal activity and predispositions, and effective public erasure of their antisocial proclivities that nevertheless continue to hurt and harm (i.e., narcissism is a moral, not a medical disorder, because they do not care about the harm caused, and care more for entitlement to its erasure). This entitlement is just that, entitlement, it is not a sustainable norm and it is therefore now an enforcement of maladaptation (a good example is how Putin’s Russia tries to sanction EU/united countries that sanction it back out of an entitlement to no consequences. It carries no weight as it is not inherently an agreed upon norm by a union of autonomous agents, it is a strongman and his yes-man cronies. It also shows how he fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and nature of the sanction as nothing but an act of aggression instead of an intervention by multiple autonomous agents).**

1. . Research shows, for instance, that reduced levels of empathy and perspective-taking drive the enhanced sense of entitlement in criminal narcissists (Hepper, Hart, Meek, Cisek, & Sedikides, 2014). Besides impairments in such interpersonal traits, narcissism has been linked to enhanced Machiavellian attitudes and increased negative emotions such as anger (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Menon & Sharland, 2011; Witte, Callahan, & Perez-Lopez, 2002). As these socio-affective and socio-cognitive processes have been related to inter-individual differences in social behavior in the general population (Bereczkei, Birkas, & Kerekes, 2010; Hein, Silani, Preuschoff, Batson, & Singer, 2010; Knoch, Pascual-Leone, Meyer, Treyer, & Fehr, 2006; Rudolph, Roesch, Greitemeyer, & Weiner, 2004), the present study systematically tested whether inter-individual differences in such traits mediate the identified alterations in social decision making in narcissism

• *Narcissists were hypothesized to not only punish from anger/entitlement when the other party could not retaliate, but also sometimes when they could actively effectively retaliate, giving narcissism the particularly disturbing social effect that makes it a moral disorder showing they didn’t care what others thought if it was at the expense of their self-construct/if it caused narcissistic injury, no matter how reasonable and how powerful/able to sanction the person was. This is one of the more disturbing encounters of the disorder. (https://www.vogue.com/article/angela-merkel-congratulates-joe-biden-ignores-donald-trump[1], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK-NYT5NGsc[2]) I am also replacing these links after seeing how Biden was profitting on the social-comparison nature of them (which is ironically a narcissistic calculus) with the strict, scenario-specific versions of them without using them as a means to make Biden look comparatively better, which is disturbingly opportunistic and narcissistic in its calculus upon reflection. (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/merkel-posts-photo-that-perfectly-captures-tense-mood-of-g-7-thanks-to-trump.html[3],** **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sIYW0%5C_HE-U[4]**[5]

1: https://www.vogue.com/article/angela-merkel-congratulates-joe-biden-ignores-donald-trump

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK-NYT5NGsc

3: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/merkel-posts-photo-that-perfectly-captures-tense-mood-of-g-7-thanks-to-trump.html

4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sIYW0%5C_HE-U

5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sIYW0_HE-U

1. Alternatively, given that narcissists are less concerned with the effects their actions have on others (Sedikides et al., 2002), it may be that they are less sensitive to other's prospective reactions and, hence, behave less generously not only when retaliation is impossible (Dictator Game), but also when the other player can punish (2nd Party Punishment Game)

• *Narcissists were also hypothesized to have far more lowered-PFC high-libidinal/adrenal reactive anger responses (it was not anger for a larger, prosocially calculated reason but more so a knee jerk short-term retaliatory reaction without a greater game plan, end, or cause). Think Putin’s continual citation of “jiu jitsu” for long-term international relations that have profound effects into the global future should this future not be considered in such “jiu jutsi” based actions. Which is an impulsive, not cognitive/intelligent, response. This is in alignment with scientific literature that clearly demonstrates narcissism is higher in impulsive action.**

1. Concerning second and third mover punishment behavior, based on findings of a heightened perception of others as unfair and enhanced anger and aggression in narcissism (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Menon & Sharland, 2011), we hypothesized that narcissism is related to an increase in anger-based punishment.

• *Informed consent was received from the Department of Psychology of the Humboldt University of Berlin.**

1. The study was approved by the Ethics Commission of the Department of Psychology of the Humboldt University of Berlin. Participants signed informed consent and received 7 euros per hour for their participation in addition to the money they could gain in the game theoretical paradigms.

• *Design of the experiment**

1. 2.3.1.1. First mover giving behavior 2.3.1.1.1. Dictator Game (DG). In the DG (Camerer, 2003) participants took the role of Player A and were first informed about their endowment (150 MUs). Then, participants could indicate how many MUs in increments of 1 MU they wanted to assign to a second player (Player B). The percentage of MUs participants transferred to player B was averaged across the two trials. 2.3.1.1.2. 2nd Party Punishment Game (2PPG). The 2PPG is a version of the Ultimatum Game (UG; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004; Güth, 1995) in which not only the Player A, but also Player B has MUs at their disposal. Participants were assigned the role of Player A for two rounds. Similar to the DG, Player A had an endowment of 150 MUs while Player B (simulated) had an endowment of 50 MUs. After players were informed about their endowments, Player A chose how many MUs s/he wanted to assign to Player B in increments of 1 MU. Subsequently, Player B could invest his/her MUs to reduce Player A's MU level in the following way: every 1 MU reduced Player A's MU level by 3 MUs. The average percentage of MUs transferred to Player B was calculated. The order of DG and 2PPG trials was randomized across participants

2. 2.3.1.2.1. 2nd Party Punishment Game (2PPG). Instructions and endowments were identical to the 2PPG described above, but participants were assigned the role of Player B. After receiving information about the endowments, participants were informed about the amount of MUs Player A (simulated) had assigned to them. Participants played two rounds in pseudorandomized order, in one round Player A offered a high amount (75 MUs, 50% of her endowment) and in one round Player A offered a low amount (10 MUs, 6.7%). Finally, participants could choose how many of their 50 MUs in increments of 1 MU they wanted to use in order to deduce the MU level of Player A (1 MU of Player B reducing Player A's MUs by 3). The percentage of MUs invested to punish Player A was calculated for low offer and high offer trials. 2.3.1.2.2. 3rd Party Punishment Game (3PPG).

3. In the 3PPG (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004) participants were assigned the role of Player C (the third party). First, participants were informed about their own and the other players' endowments: Player A had 150 MUs, Player B did not have any MUs, and Player C (participant) had 50 MUs. Then, Player C observed how many MUs Player A (simulated giver) assigned to Player B (simulated receiver). Participants played two rounds in pseudorandomized order. Endowments, simulated choices, etc. were identical to the 2PPG. The percentage of MUs invested to punish Player A was calculated for low offer and high offer trials. The order of 2PPG and 3PPG trials was randomized across participants

• *The CEEQ was used as a measure for empathy**

1. Interpersonal reactivity. Participants filled in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983) and the Cognitive and Emotional Empathy Questionnaire (CEEQ; Savage et al., submitted). The IRI is a 28 item questionnaire measuring empathetic concern, personal distress, perspective-taking, and fantasy. The fantasy subscale was not included due to previous criticism (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004). The CEEQ is a 30 item questionnaire measuring the cognitive and emotional facets of empathy, including the subscales empathic concern, perspective taking, mirroring, and mental state perception. Sum scores for all subscales were derived for both questionnaires

• *Narcissists were more likely to not accept and even punish low offers, showing their inherent entitlement.**

1. Taken together, game theoretical paradigms revealed trait narcissism to be related to lower giving, particularly in settings where retaliation was possible. When taking the role of the receiver or observer, narcissists punished others more harshly, especially when offers were low.

• *Narcissists showed significantly less perspective taking (less empathy) and higher personal distress, showing that they were feeling higher distress about their own psychological state, and not even attempting to take the other person’s perspective (abnormal self-focus, entitlement)**

1. The high narcissism group reported significantly less perspectivetaking (t(120) = 2.4, p b 0.05, d = 0.44) and higher personal distress (t(120) = 3.5, p b 0.01, d = 0.64) in the IRI than the low narcissism group.

• *Narcissists high in narcissism also showed higher Machiavellian attitudes.**

1. The high narcissism group reported significantly more Machiavellianism than the low narcissism group (t(120) = 3.4, p b 0.01, d = 0.61) and PNI scores were correlated with the Machiavellian Index (r = 0.35, p b 0.001). Taken together, questionnaires revealed enhanced negative state affect in narcissism as well as enhanced personal distress, reduced perspective-taking and higher Machiavellian attitudes.

• *Perspective taking and personal distress when mediators of the independent variable of the PNI scale for this particular paper.**

1. Hence, PNI scores were modeled as independent variable and giving in the 2PPG as dependent variable, while perspective-taking (PT) and personal distress (PD) were tested as mediators (see Fig. 1). The model revealed that narcissism was negatively associated with giving in the 2PPG, with PT and with PD.

• *Narcissist’s enhanced punishment was driven by the motivation of anger, not by any motivation of perspective-taking and moral indignation as mentioned in the normative enforcement example earlier in the paper. Narcissists did not engage very willingly in and were generally not good at perspective taking when they do engage in it (avoidance may be a way to preserve self-constructs of being empathetic, able to understand, etc.). These results are generally congruent with most scientific literature on narcissists.**

1. Narcissism was associated with low offer punishment and with anger, sadness, and Machiavellianism. The direct effect of anger was associated positively with punishment. No relations were found for sadness and Machiavellianism. Due to paths a and b being significant for state anger, mediation analysis was applied. Results indicated that anger was a robust mediator for enhanced punishment in narcissism

• *These mediators, perspective taking and personal distress, were explanatory factors for differences between high and low narcissism.**

1. Taken together, mediation analyses revealed clear mediators for the differences between high and low narcissism in social decision making.

• *Trait narcissism is linked to reduced generosity, driven by poorer perspective-taking skills, and to increased anger-based punishment.**

1. Employing established game theoretical paradigms as well as state and trait questionnaires, we revealed that trait narcissism is linked to reduced generosity, driven by poorer perspective-taking skills, and to increased anger-based punishment.

• *Narcissists showed overall reduced giving. Nor did they respond to different conditions on whether to give or not, they just overall defaulted to not giving, showing a blanket non-giving response is a sign of high narcissism.**

1. In accordance with the literature, narcissism in our study was related to reduced giving (Campbell et al., 2005). Interestingly, narcissists did not show enhanced strategic behavior (i.e., being particularly or exclusively generous when others could punish, e.g., Güth, 1995; Steinbeis et al., 2012).

• *Higher narcissists had the more disturbing result, still acting selfishly even when the opposing party could and did retaliate, showing a highly maladaptive predisposition.**

1. By contrast, people scoring high on narcissism behaved more selfishly than people with lower scores especially in settings in which interaction partners could retaliate (2PPG).

• *Narcissists did not seem to anticipate, or value, clear signs of potential retaliatory power in the opposing party when giving non-generous offers, and did not seem to understand the consequences, namely the retaliation for undue non-generosity that followed, even though to non-narcissists the causes seemed completely obvious. This suggests that they are truly unable to see how they come off, in congruence with their low perspective taking ability, even though when they are in the same position, they immediately expect the very perspective taking they completely failed at, retaliating aggressively at a low offer. This is a particular interesting/disturbing result, showing a deeper malfunction of the logical-perspective taking nexus (this is very similar to a logical conclusion based on perspective taking malfunction found in the scientific literature on narcissist’s proclivity to sexual coercion and struggling to take the position of the female victim even when asked to, showing a greater and rather powerful denial apparatus at play in the narcissistic cognition: https://www.reddit.com/r/zeronarcissists/comments/1g0fwoj/narcissism%5C_sexual%5C_refusal%5C_and%5C_aggression%5C_testing/[6])**

6: https://www.reddit.com/r/zeronarcissists/comments/1g0fwoj/narcissism%5C_sexual%5C_refusal%5C_and%5C_aggression%5C_testing/

1. Hence, rather than displaying enhanced strategic behavior, narcissists seemed to be less sensitive to or less aware of the potential negative reactions of others to non-generous offers. Results of the mediation analyses suggest that lower generosity in the 2PPG was fully driven by a reduced perspective-taking ability in participants scoring high on narcissism.

• *Thus, narcissists acted without socially acceptable levels of generosity even when it was very clearly in their interest to do so, a particularly disturbing result fruitful for further research.**

1. The impaired ability or willingness to take an interaction partner's perspective (or action opportunities) into account, thus, led narcissists to behave less generously in situations where generosity would have been in their own interest (in order to forgo punishment).

• *These can cause quick and irrevocable breakdowns, again showing how important it is to keep narcissists from these positions which they desire where quick and irrevocable breakdowns can have profoundly negative effects the higher they get.**

1. While reduced giving and ignorance of others' punishment options seems relatively harmless in the setting described here, research in economics and psychology suggests that large-scale cooperation can break down quickly and irrevocably when individuals choose unfair and selfish distribution options (Fehr & Gachter, 2002; Ledyard, 1995)

• *Beyond professional disasters, this is also why narcissists tend to have unsatisfactory relationships that break down quickly and often.**

1. The lack of considering other peoples' perspectives and action opportunities and the ensuing tendency to behave less generously towards others may well be one of the core reasons for the impaired social interactions of narcissists (e.g., unstable relationships; Back et al., 2013; Campbell et al., 2002).

• *Narcissists showed impulsive retribution, meaning they were more likely to impulsively abuse from a position of excessive anger alone, without any greater inhibitory prefrontal-cortical action showing evidence of use, as opposed to sanctioning or intervening from a mutually endorsed and collective repulsion to a relatively objective moral injustice by multiple autonomous agents that are demonstrated to have a reasonableness and inner coherence that makes them competent enough to enact such interventions which does in fact show such inhibitory deliberations (checking for mutual endorsement, checking for a greater plan as context for the action given, checking for internal legal consistency in adjacent mutually endorsing agents).**

1. Complementarily to reduced generosity and lower sensitivity to others' punishment options, high narcissists exhibited enhanced levels of punishment when faced with other people's offers, especially when these were unfair. Such behavior may have two different origins: First, it may reflect the tendency to reinforce fairness norms by punishing unfair agents (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004) or, second, it may be a direct result of anger experienced when treated unfairly (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Menon & Sharland, 2011), hence, reflecting impulsive retributive actions.

• *Narcissists were more likely to get far more angry than non-narcissists would and an augmented tendency to blame others when faced with injustice.**

1. Supporting the latter, people with high trait narcissism reported higher states of sadness and anger during the interaction, particularly when receiving unfair offers. Mediation analyses suggest that enhanced punishment behavior in narcissists was driven by their higher levels of experienced anger elicited by others unfair offers. This finding is in line with reports of narcissists' enhanced sense of being treated unjust, increased levels of anger, and their augmented tendency to blame others (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998) as well as with research on the relation of anger and punishment (Knoch et al., 2006; McCall et al., 2014).

• *The excess that a narcissist goes in the direction of anger makes social equilibrium/social stability impossible, showing the inherent pathology of narcissism and the fact it is a moral, not a medical, disorder. (they do not care about the damage they do to the social equilibrium in their** **maladapted pursuit of what they consider, often impulsively and not cognitively, to be justice, and are willing to go to levels of irreparable damage to the previous balance, only to expect it to return later when in fact it only existed because people never were that out of balance cooperatively. The Doomsday clock being the closest to midnight it has been since the cold war under Trump’s presidency is a strong such lack of awareness of the deeply deleterious, unsustainable and excessively non-cooperative destruction their anger reactions have on the overall underlying balance of the cooperative world).**

1. Narcissists, hence, generally respond to unfairness with heightened anger, which, in turn leads them to punish more harshly. The tendency to respond aggressively to others' unfair behavior may jeopardize stable social interactions. In fact, research suggests that stable cooperation is strongly supported by an interaction strategy that has been termed ‘generous tit-for-tat’ (Wedekind & Milinski, 1996), namely doing as the other does (e.g., cooperating when the other cooperates), but with bracing cooperative behavior at least once after the other has behaved selfishly.

• *Due to these very real risks, narcissists exist on a spectrum of an individual experiencing high conflict and deeply dissatisfying relationships to someone who is an active threat to the overall cooperative social balance to the point of creating irreparable damage (aka, someone who cannot be treated so lightly as just one who creates and has deeply dissatisfying/abusive relationships but rather one who now requires more thorough management and supervision to prevent the greater collective’s lives being irreparably damaged because of one or a few people’s inability to control the excess of their anger in the face of narcissistic injury)**

1. Since both reduced generosity and enhanced retributive aggressive actions have been reliably shown to endanger stable cooperation it is likely that they are at the core of the difficulties narcissists face when interacting with others - ranging from being considered less sympathetic and experiencing less satisfying relationships to being an actual burden to others and society. Accordingly, the present results could contribute to intervention research that aims at improving interpersonal relationships and behavior in narcissism, because they suggest that targeted trainings in the domain of social cognitive abilities such as perspective-taking and emotion regulation may help to enhance prosocial behavior and reduce impulsive retributive actions in narcissism.

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