Feelings of exclusion aren’t all that fun. And they aren’t all that unusual, either, at least not for narcissists. According to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, narcissists are more likely to feel left out than non-narcissists, partially due to their actual exclusion and partially due to their perceived exclusion.

“Feeling ostracized is a subjective experience based on the perception of social cues by the individual,” said Christiane Büttner, a study author and a social psychologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, according to a press release. “Our findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of narcissism are more sensitive to exclusion cues, leading them to perceive ostracism more frequently.”

Seeking Social Status

Narcissism is a personality trait that’s defined by self-absorption, with many so-called grandiose narcissists seeking social status, admiration, and acknowledgment. But do most grandiose narcissists actually acquire the social status and the admiration that they seek?

Studying thousands of participants through a series of surveys and experiments, a team of researchers recently investigated the narcissistic experience of exclusion. Their results suggest that grandiose narcissists are more likely to feel ostracized, both because they are left out and because they perceive themselves to be left out, thanks, in all likelihood, to their tendency to see ambiguous social situations as exclusionary.

“Some may be intentionally ostracized,” Büttner said in the press release, “while others may merely believe they are being excluded.”

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Experiencing Exclusion

To start their investigation, the researchers turned to a survey of almost 1,600 individuals whose narcissism and experience of exclusion were assessed through a series of ranked statements in 2015. Analyzing the participants’ responses, which ranged on a six-point scale of applicability from fully applicable to not at all applicable, the team found that the participants who tended to show narcissistic traits were also the participants who tended to feel shut out or “ignored” in social situations.

To refine their results, the researchers then asked around 300 participants to take narcissism assessments and to record their feelings of past and present ostracism, reporting present ostracism over a period of 14 days.

“Participants with higher narcissism scores reported feeling excluded more frequently in daily life,” Büttner said in the release, “aligning with our earlier survey results.”

Additional studies suggested that these feelings of exclusion are a result of reality as well as perception. One of the team’s experiments found, for instance, that non-narcissists typically avoid narcissists, while others — including an experiment in which participants were asked whether they would feel left out in an imaginary social situation — showed that narcissists tended to see exclusion in socially ambiguous scenarios.

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Treating Ostracism, and Narcissism, Too

The researchers’ results suggest that narcissism and the experience of exclusion could contribute to each other. Analyzing the results of a long, longitudinal survey of around 72,700 participants conducted from 2009 to 2022, the team found that a shift in an individual’s narcissism was associated with a corresponding shift in their feelings of exclusion in the following year, while a shift in an individual’s feelings of exclusion was also associated with a corresponding shift in their narcissism.

“Narcissism may contribute to social exclusion,” Büttner said in the release, “but ostracism itself can also fuel the development of narcissistic traits.”

According to the researchers, the results speak to the complexity of our social interactions and could help inform interventions, not only against ostracism but against conflicts tied to narcissism as well.

“If people with high narcissistic traits are more likely to feel and be excluded, this could contribute to escalating tensions in workplaces or social groups. At the same time, their heightened sensitivity to exclusion might make them more likely to react aggressively,” Büttner said in the release. “These findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving interpersonal relationships and reducing social friction should consider both the perceptions and behaviors of the individuals involved.”

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Article Sources

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Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.