EMPATHY AND THE FALSIFICATION OF NARCISSISM

What is the single biggest social problem facing the West now? Well, there are many problems, all serious. However, if I were to pick one I would say narcissism. Why would I say that? That takes some explaining, to say the least. I will attempt to do that in this article and others which will follow. The scope of the subject is such that for proper understanding it must be split into parts. This article provides a preamble of sorts, the next one will discuss what narcissism probably is (the mechanism behind it), and the third will discuss the consequences in a wider context. Perhaps there will even be more than three articles – I don’t know at this point in time. This article is a bit long, and a bit dry, but to make it easier to read I have added liberal amounts of sarcasm for readers’ enjoyment.

Aren’t three articles a bit generous for discussing such a limited topic? Well, narcissism is anything but a limited topic. It is a complicated issue with serious consequences for western societies – and perhaps for societies outside the West as well. You may think that narcissism is a problem – you may even think it’s a big problem – but I doubt you realize how incredibly serious a problem it is. Thus, three articles – at least.

Only 20 years ago narcissism was a dusty psychological term, mostly out of the public eye. Psychologists talked about it, some of them tried to define it, and some created personality models to describe it. Things have changed and narcissism is now a part of the public discourse. There is even a “narcissism industry” now with scores of “experts” providing advice on how to spot narcissists, how to deal with them and how to avoid them. Youtube is swarming with channels like that.

The interest in narcissism is not surprising. We see how people have started to behave on social media and in real life. They are selfish, isolated in a fantasy world of their own self-importance, and they seem oblivious to the strangeness of their own behavior. It’s not just the man on the street who sees this. Research has shown that there are massive trends in society toward selfish behavior. It looks like an unstoppable wave which threatens to swallow up our society.

So, what is narcissism? We have a picture in our minds of selfish and destructive people who manipulate others. Strangely, that picture is as good as it gets. Psychologists and psychiatrists haven’t been able to define it properly either. Go to Wikipedia, that bastion of integrity and truth (sarcasm), and look it up. There is a good overview there of research, theoretical work, and current thinking. You will see lots of definitions, lots of subcategories, lots of symptoms, and lots of disagreements on everything.

The truth is that the “experts” don’t really know what narcissism is. They have personality models and symptoms but they don’t know what it really is. Even the concepts they use to define it aren’t clear, nor do they have clear causes. What does “manipulative” really mean? Why are people manipulative? What compels them to behave like that?

In order to understand anything at all, whether it is human behavior, nuclear physics or biology, it is necessary to go beyond the definition level. Defining things does not explain them – and neither does describing them with lists of symptoms. There must be a mechanism – theoretical or real – for anything to be properly investigated or understood.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have been strangely reluctant to work on mechanisms behind mental disorders and personality disorders. Most of the work in recent decades involves personality theories based on synthetic traits and “definitions-by-symptoms.” This includes narcissism, which is both defined as a personality trait (or a cluster of traits) and a personality disorder. It is therefore of interest to both researchers in personality psychology and to members of the mental health community.

Narcissism is now described and defined both by personality models based on traits, and by clinical definitions based on symptoms. Both of these will be referred to many times in this article and the ones to follow, and it is therefore prudent to take a little detour and describe what they are. As we could see from the Wikipedia page, they haven’t been all that successful so far. Furthermore, they seem to be a little strange – particularly the clinical definitions. This strangeness is the main subject matter of this article.

Personality traits – fake and real

Nothing can be measured unless you have something reasonably tangible to measure. In personality psychology, personality is generally split up into “traits” which, then determine “personality types” based on a person’s position on a number of traits. A trait is a basic aspect of personality; something which is steady over time, applies to people in general, and can be measured. Researchers and theorists work on different types of traits, which can (very) roughly be split in three:

• Primary/biological/evolutionary traits

• Derived traits

• Synthetic traits

Primary traits (or causal traits) are “physical” in the sense that they are represented biologically in the individual and are a product of evolution. They can even, in some cases, be observed indirectly, such as with a functional imaging scanner or by genetic analysis. There is a lot of confusion regarding those traits but there is considerable evidence for a number of them. An example would be something like “emotional salience” – or how strongly emotions affect people. Another example would be inward versus outward focus of the brain. Despite being biological, some of these traits can be significantly affected by the environment – for example by the individual’s upbringing.

Primary traits, once identified, have very high “predictive/explanatory power” and correlate strongly with all kinds of variables, including attitudes, behavior, physical characteristics, and even mental and physical diseases. Identifying these relationships with other biological variables is in fact the most dependable method for identifying primary traits. Certain (genetic) mental diseases are, for example, very strongly correlated with certain personality traits. It would therefore seem to be a biological trait behind both – to some degree at least. A personality model built on primary traits could be very strong indeed.

Derived traits are traits which are perhaps not directly biological or evolutionary, but describe something very real nevertheless. They are discovered by testing and behavioral observation, and correlate strongly with primary traits. A good example would be introversion/extraversion, which has high explanatory power and differentiates well between individuals. It is, however, not entirely “clean” and may be caused by more than one primary trait. Some introverts, for example, occasionally enjoy the company of others and have good social skills, while other introverts (with the same score on the trait) get nervous around other people and have poor social skills. It is likely that more than one primary trait is in play.

Synthetic traits are traits which are “statistically derived” or a combination of traits associated by statistical means. Those traits are often called factors, composite traits, superordinate traits, or dimensions. They are essentially statistical constructs which form personality indexes, much like economic indexes, such as inflation. Inflation is a weighted average of prices of selected goods and services. A synthetic personality trait is basically the same, except that instead of consumer products and services we have traits which are usually cooked up by a semi-voodoo statistical method called “factor analysis.” This comparison may be a bit unfair, but it’s not entirely wrong and quite illustrative.

The problem with synthetic traits is that they are easy to manipulate (much like inflation) and even harder to understand. An example of a trait like this would be “agreeableness” on a five-factor personality test.

You don’t have to employ sophisticated or “highly scientific” methods to develop personality traits or tests with explanatory power (or predictive power). Virtually all personality traits, whether they are primary or cobbled together by statistical means, have some explanatory/predictive power. They all correlate with all kinds of things. We could even give typewriters to a group of monkeys, along with bananas for motivation, and eventually they would type out a personality test with traits which would correlate with all kinds of things, and could be used in “highly scientific” and published research.

The reason for this is that the primary biological traits are so strong that they influence virtually every behavior and attitude. Even the most unscientific and ridiculous trait will correlate with all kinds of stuff for that reason. We see the same thing in intelligence measurements, where general intelligence is so strong that it influences virtually any task we can think of. We could easily task our monkeys with creating an intelligence test with moderate to high correlation with IQ – after they have completed our personality test.

The question is not whether personality traits predict stuff (they all do) but what kind of things they predict and how strongly – and how easy they are to understand. Primary traits are by far the strongest and clearest, then derived traits, and lastly synthetic traits. The biggest issue, however, is that it is difficult to create an explanatory mechanism without primary/biological traits. The focus should always be on them for that reason.

Personality psychology has in recent decades focused on synthetic traits and models based on them to explore personality – including narcissism. The result has been lack of progress, confusion, lots of grant money to sort out that confusion, and a staggering number of correlations between everything that nobody really understands. The complexity level of the field and lack of clarity is now completely out of control and anybody can basically “prove” anything he wants – even that non-narcissists are, in fact, evil narcissists – and that the real narcissists are good and moral people (I actually read a research paper like that recently).

The situation is bad, but it hasn’t all been for nothing. All the research, unclear as it is, provides a giant database for astute researchers to zoom in on biological traits through patterns of correlations. Unfortunately, not many researchers or theorists are doing that. Psychologists cannot be totally blamed for this situation because a personality researcher who creates a solid model based on biological traits would probably find himself out of grants and out of a job. Biological variables are not popular these days in our subjectivistic society and are usually only discussed behind closed doors. It’s safer just to work on statistical models.

Symptoms and definitions by committee

Mental disorders and personality disorders are generally defined by symptoms. There is a list of symptoms for each disorder, and a patient must present a predetermined minimum number of symptoms (for example five out of a total of nine) to be considered to have the mental or personality disorder in question. The symptoms are mostly derived from clinical observations. Symptoms of personality disorders, such as narcissism, often contain a mixture of traits and “classical” symptoms – which are not traits.

The list of symptoms defines the disorder, but rarely explains it. In fact, there is very little real understanding of mental disorders or personality disorders. Many clinical psychologists and psychiatrists don’t even seem to be aware that a definition in the form of symptoms explains nothing on its own. The list is only a diagnostic tool, and as you can imagine, if there is little or no understanding of the condition, the diagnostic tool may be inaccurate. In fact, there seems to be surprisingly little interest in discovering the primary causal variables behind these disorders. But then again, who needs that when you have symptoms - and lucrative methods of therapy and drugs?

Where do these lists of symptoms come from? Well, they are put together by a committee. There is an official manual of mental and personality disorders, containing lots of definitions and symptoms, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association. The definitions in the manual for each disorder are created by a shadowy committee which some say is beholden to the pharmaceutical industry. They decide in secret meetings what should be defined as a mental disorder and what shouldn’t, and how to diagnose it. I’m not joking or exaggerating here. The meetings are actually secret and the members have to sign nondisclosure agreements. It is a politburo of sorts.

This secret politburo is extremely powerful. It has cooked up definitions for every disorder known to man, regardless of whether they are real or not. They don’t only define what is a disorder and what isn’t and how to diagnose it - for the United States – they do it for most of the world as well. They decide if you are crazy or not, a good person or not, and most of the mental health community follows their lead. They have also defined narcissism, which we shall take a closer look at.

The official definition of narcissism

Now, let’s take a look at the official definition of narcissism from the most recent version of the DSM. You can find this all over the internet but I’m using a good summary from Psychology Today. The summary includes more detailed descriptions for each symptom. You can find it here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lifetime-connections/202110/the-13-traits-narcissist

These are the traits – note that most are actually symptoms, not coherent and clear traits. In order to be deemed a narcissist, at least five of these nine traits/symptoms must be present:

• Grandiose sense of self-importance.

• Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

• Belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions.

• Need for excessive admiration.

• Sense of entitlement.

• Interpersonally exploitive behavior.

• Lack of empathy.

• Envy of others or belief that others are envious of him or her.

• Demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes.

This list of traits/symptoms is as close as you can get to a “consensus” on what defines narcissism. Most models and definitions of narcissism include some of these traits/symptoms, including the popular “dark triad” theory, which defines narcissism as grandiosity, pride, egotism, and lack of empathy.

Now, let’s look closely at this list of symptoms and try to get a feeling for what they have in common. Note that the list mentions “a sense of” and “need for” several times, as well as several descriptions of emotionally-related concepts such as self-importance, arrogance, love and envy. You can also see this in the “dark triad” theory, which is all about emotions. According to this, a narcissist is driven by strong “positive” emotions involving his self, and an absolute need to feed them by exploiting others. This interpretation emerges from this list in a very clear fashion – and it is essentially correct.

There are, however, two oddities in the list which do not quite fit in. The first one is “interpersonally exploitative behavior” which refers to the need to interfere (emotionally) with other people. This partly refers to manipulation, a core symptom of narcissism, which is curiously omitted from this list. Another core symptom; low self-consciousness, is also omitted – although it is mentioned in the PsychToday article. Anyway, the exploitative behavior symptom is qualitatively different from the other symptoms. The other symptoms describe emotional needs, while this symptom describes what narcissists do to fulfill those needs. They fulfill them by exploiting and manipulation others. Every narcissist has this symptom to a lesser or a greater degree, but according the manual, you can be a narcissist without it – because you only need 5 of 9. That is a bit sloppy isn’t it?

The other oddity is far more serious and involves the “lack of empathy” symptom. Let’s look at the description in the PsychToday article:

“This is the cold inability to accurately recognize how other people feel. This speaks to the narcissist's lack of emotional awareness or depth. It is not always that narcissists don’t “care” about another’s feelings, it is just that they are unaware that others might even have those feelings.”

Look at this definition and then look at the symptoms above. Do you see the problem?

What is empathy?

Let’s talk about empathy. Nowadays it seems to be a key term in psychology and is used extensively in society at large. Empathy is probably not a personality trait as such, but a result of other traits which deal with how active or accessible emotions are to people, and whether the brain is focused inward or toward the environment.

Some people have their emotions “unshielded” in the sense that they are very aware of them, very motivated by them, very controlled by them, and place a lot of importance in them. People on the “other side of the trait” have their emotions “shielded” in the sense that they are not very aware of them, not very motivated by them, not very controlled by them, and do not place much importance in them.

Some brains are focused inward – on people’s private thoughts, while other brains are focused on the environment. The inward brain is self-aware, knows itself well, likes puzzles and systems, and is not very interested in what is going on outside. The outward brain is perceptive and aware of the environment, interested in the environment, and people in particular.

Note that these are differences of a degree and not distinct groups – with a many people having these traits in approximate balance. However, it seems that a person’s position on these traits determines the person’s empathy. People highly focused outward and with high emotional awareness tend to have high empathy – while the opposite group has low empathy.

So what is empathy? Empathy consists of two main “mechanisms.” One is the ability to read other people’s emotions and emotional states. High-empathy people can easily pick up what people are feeling just by looking at them or with a short conversation. The other mechanism is that other people’s emotions tend to automatically affect the high-empathy person emotionally. There are basically two channels – the perception of the emotions of others, and a feedback channel where those emotions, in turn, affect the empath himself emotionally. The reason for the feedback channel is that empaths have unshielded emotions which are easily affected.

Low-empathy people are not good at reading other people’s emotions and not very concerned with them. They are also less affected by emotions (their own and others’) because their emotions are far more shielded than the emotions of the empaths. Low-empathy people, however, have fully functional emotional systems which can be seen when they suffer emotional breakdowns or lose their temper. They have a full range of emotions and as potent as the empaths have – they are just kept under lock and key for the most part. Low-empathy people also tend to be coldly rational, which is a direct result of their ability to keep their emotions in check – and not a result of them having no emotions at all.

Lack of empathy and narcissism

So, high-empathy people are emotional people with keen sense of their environment and other people - and their emotions. Low-empathy people are not very emotional, place little importance in emotions and aren’t very interested in the emotions of others.

Now, let’s go back to the definition of a narcissist above and the traits and symptoms listed there. Remember what a narcissist is according to that definition? A narcissist is a highly emotionally charged person with great and selfish emotional needs, who exploits and manipulates other people to fulfill those needs. This person, according to the definition, also has low empathy. How does that work exactly?

How can people with muted emotions and little interest in other people have overwhelming emotional needs - and manipulate others with great skill to fulfill them? Why would they do it at all? Well, they wouldn’t. Most of them probably couldn’t, even if they tried.

Lack of empathy is not a symptom of narcissism. Empathy is a symptom of narcissism – and not just a symptom – it is the key mechanism in feeding the needs of narcissists through the manipulation and exploitation of others. Empathy is a skill all narcissists, by definition, must have. Without it they wouldn’t be able to emotionally exploit or manipulate other people. The definition from the American Psychiatric Association, as well as most other definitions, is simply wrong. This is not a theory – this is a logically obvious fact, like 2+2=4 obvious.

What is going on here? There is no chance that the people at the American Psychiatric Association who put the list of symptoms together don’t know what empathy is. There is no chance that they confused it with sympathy, compassion or altruism – which narcissists lack, but are totally different concepts. So why did they do this? It is almost like they are protecting the real narcissists by framing the low-empathy people.

But it doesn’t stop there. Remember the definition of “lack of empathy?” let’s look at it again:

“This is the cold inability to accurately recognize how other people feel. This speaks to the narcissist's lack of emotional awareness or depth. It is not always that narcissists don’t “care” about another’s feelings, it is just that they are unaware that others might even have those feelings.”

This is not a true description of a low-empathy person. A low-empathy person has plenty of emotional “depth,” can be warm toward others, and is aware of emotions in others. He has a fully functioning emotional system, even though it’s not salient. This description applies to a totally different kind of person; a particular type of “classical psychopath” who has a defective or damaged emotional system. Low-empathy people do not have damaged emotional systems by default.

So we are to believe the following: narcissists, who are defined by their compulsive and selfish emotional needs and their exploitation and manipulation of others (not to mention their low self-consciousness), are actually people with muted emotions (and high self-consciousness) who have limited interpersonal skills and limited ability to detect or manipulate emotions. Oh, and those people are psychopaths too.

The strangest of all is this: how can anyone with decent psychology training and an IQ over room temperature not notice this? I’m sure many people have, but they aren’t saying much.

The sympathy/empathy switcheroo

One of the best TV shows in the late eighties and early nineties was an iconic Star Trek: The Next Generation. One of the characters, counselor Deanna Troi, had interesting characteristics. She had psychic abilities in the form of supercharged empathy. She could sense other people’s emotions, and these emotions, in turn, often significantly affected her. She was generally a nice person but her emphatic abilities didn’t translate into her being exceptionally caring, compassionate or sympathetic to everyone and everything. She could be a hardass if necessary. The way the show’s writers defined her empathic abilities was very accurate. They described them properly and didn’t conflate empathy with sympathy and caring. This is one of few characters on television where empathy was handled like that.

If you watch movies and TV shows from the nineties and older, you will notice that the word “empathy” was hardly ever used. Instead “sympathy” and “compassion” were used. Then, about 15-20 years ago it was like a switch had been flipped. Almost every TV show and movie started using “empathy” instead of “sympathy.” It was like there had been a memo sent to all scriptwriters, telling them to replace sympathy with empathy. Now the word has almost completely replaced sympathy and compassion and usurped their meaning, not just in movies and on TV – but in the English language in general. If I check synonyms for empathy in Microsoft Word, it tells me that they are, among others, “compassion” and “sympathy.” Those two words also have “empathy” as a synonym.

This is a very interesting development because empathy is not the same as sympathy or compassion. It is a completely different thing. There is even evidence that people with high-empathy are less compassionate and altruistic than people with low empathy. Research has for example indicated that low-empathy people are more likely to show altruistic behavior than high-empathy people when others are unaware of their altruism. When others are aware, the high-empathy people suddenly become more altruistic. It is (rightly) said that true altruistic behavior is the one nobody knows about. Interestingly, one of the core attributes of narcissists is their desire to show others how good and smart they are to get their approval and adulation. That would explain why high-empathy people need audience when they display their compassion.

The way the word “empathy” has been redefined in the language is really incredible. It is almost like a major PR campaign was initiated for a word. It is almost like there was a campaign to equate emotional people (or even emotionally out of control people) with good people. If you are emotional, you are a caring, sympathetic and compassionate person. If you are rational, you are an evil psychopathic narcissist.

This effort, along with the false definition of narcissism in the DSM manual, is one of the most egregious falsifications in psychology and psychiatry in recent decades. That’s saying something since these disciplines consist of falsifications to a significant degree. Whether this was done on purpose or “just happened” – I don’t know, but happened it did.

So, if you are an emotional person who cries over The Notebook – does that mean you are a narcissist? Not necessarily, although it would probably be easy to turn you into one, especially at a young age. That issue and others will be the subject of the next article, where we will look at the mechanism behind narcissism.