Today's Tuesday • 10 mins read
Do narcissists have no empathy at all? Or do they feel empathy for certain people in their lives?
Psychology says the answer is more layered. Narcissism exists on a spectrum.
So, some people have a healthy amount of it (positive narcissism), and some others have a tad too much. And fewer still are so high on it they can be clinically diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Moreover, most narcissists behave normally most of the time. But when their narcissism gets triggered, they get acutely self-centric and indifferent to other people’s pain.
Triggered narcissists are almost blind to subtle social signals like your looks of discomfort or disbelief.
Is that because they misread social signals, or do they simply lack empathy?
What Type of Empathy Do Narcissists Have
Summary: Narcissists possess limited, selective, and often transactional empathy. They lack genuine emotional empathy (affective empathy) but often have high intellectual empathy (cognitive empathy). The latter allows them to understand and exploit others’ emotions for personal gain. Moreover, their empathy is inconsistent: present for underdogs or for maintaining a positive public image, but often absent in close relationships.
By definition, a narcissist lacks empathy, but there is a subtle distinction worth making. They do not lack empathy entirely. They lack emotional empathy. Most of them retain cognitive empathy (also known as perspective-taking or empathic accuracy).
- Affective/Emotional empathy: the ability to feel and share another’s emotions as that person is experiencing them. Narcissists lack this.
- Cognitive empathy/Perspective taking: the ability to understand and perceive the thoughts and perspectives of another person. Narcissists often have this.
Why Selective Empathy Makes Narcissists So Effective
Narcissists rely on cognitive empathy. This makes them skilled at reading others’ thoughts and emotions without actually feeling them.
That one ability makes them effective manipulators. It lets them read, predict, and manipulate people’s responses.
They can appear consoling while feeling no compassion. They can make others feel a particular emotion while remaining entirely detached.
“If empathy is walking in another’s shoes to feel where they pinch, narcissists are unlikely and unwilling to imagine putting their feet in another’s shoes to feel where the shoes hurt.” — Dr. Sandip Roy
They may notice your pain. They do not experience it themselves and feel no particular motivation to help. Your emotions do not trigger similar emotions in them.
Do Narcissists Fake Empathy?
Yes, narcissists can fake empathy. They display what is often called “surface empathy,” a learned or strategic response that mimics empathy without any genuine feeling (Wang & Wang, 2024).
Their cognitive empathy gives them the raw material. It tells them what you think and feel. They use that information to perform the emotion they calculate you expect from them. They also use it to influence your emotions and actions through hurt, love, praise, or threats of abandonment.
The process works like this:
- They use cognitive empathy to identify what emotion they should be expressing.
- They use learned social cues to mimic that emotion convincingly.
They can read the room accurately. What they cannot do is feel it.
- They can correctly read thoughts like, “This person is planning how to escape this conversation right now.”
- They do not have feelings like, “I am overwhelming this person with my achievement stories, so I need to stop.”
Narcissists can mimic your emotions, but they cannot mirror them. They are copycat empaths, not true empaths.
Can Narcissists Show Selective Empathy?
Narcissism and empathy sit at opposite ends of an emotional spectrum:
- Narcissism centers on self-importance and self-service at the cost of ignoring other people’s needs and feelings.
- Empathy is the ability to understand and share another’s feelings, and the desire to care for and support them.
Research shows that people high in narcissism tend to show low empathy, and those high in empathy tend to show low narcissistic tendencies (Baron-Cohen, 2011).
But both traits can coexist in one person. A highly narcissistic person may act with empathy in certain situations or toward certain people for two main reasons:
- The same person can be highly narcissistic in some situations and less so in others, since narcissism exists on a spectrum.
- A narcissist may display “surface empathy,” a learned or strategic response that mimics compassion without genuine feeling.
A narcissist might comfort a partner or close friend if it helps maintain the relationship or their image of being nice. But they will more likely remain indifferent if consoling or helping offers no personal benefit.
Narcissists often choose high-empathy people for intimate roles: partners and close friends. Because first, they are easier to manipulate, and second, they get to learn from them how to perform empathy and use it for their own ends.
Why Do Narcissists Struggle With Empathy
The root of narcissists’ lack of empathy often lies in early childhood. Children who experience neglect, emotional abuse, or inconsistent parenting cannot fully develop the empathic circuitry that forms in secure attachment relationships.
Their narcissism frequently evolves as an abused child’s defense against parental harm. That hurt child grows callous to their own pain, and later to the pain of others.
When a parent neglects a child, pushes them away when they seek love, or blames and abuses them, the child’s brain constructs a false internal world.
For narcissists, that internal world becomes more real than their external one. The false self serves as a defense against insults and abuse, built on grandiosity, self-importance, and emotional detachment.
- Did you know there are six types of narcissists?
How To Deal With A Narcissist Who Lacks Empathy
Dealing with a narcissist who shows no empathy is quite difficult, because the strategies that work in normal relationships (like expressing hurt, asking to understand, appealing to their conscience) do not register with a narcissist in the way you expect.
Here are 5 research-backed and clinically proven ways to deal with narcissists who lack empathy:
- Go no contact if you can. Perhaps the best solution is to slowly limit contact with the narcissist and then cut it off completely. No contact takes away their chance for manipulation and gives you space to recover. If the relationship is personal and voluntary, this is the cleanest exit.
- Use the gray rock method if you cannot leave. If the narcissist is a coworker, family member, or co-parent, full no contact may not be possible. With these, use the gray rock method: make yourself as unappealing and emotionally unresponsive as possible to the narcissist. Since they feed on reaction, when you give them none, you become an uninteresting target.
- Set boundaries around behavior, not feelings. Asking a narcissist to feel differently falls flat; they can’t process it. So state clearly what behavior you will and will not accept, and follow through consistently. It is more likely to produce a change in how they treat you. Keep the boundary specific and non-negotiable.
- Do not explain your pain in detail. Narcissists with high cognitive empathy will use details of your vulnerabilities against you. Share as little emotional information as possible. The less they know about what hurts you, the fewer tools they have.
- Seek support outside the relationship. Long exposure to a narcissist without empathy erodes your own sense of reality. A therapist familiar with narcissistic dynamics, or a support group, can help you maintain perspective and rebuild what the relationship has worn down.
Do Narcissists Feel Sympathy
Sympathy is feeling pity or sorrow for someone else’s suffering, and narcissists understand this on an intellectual level.
But their sympathies are profoundly misdirected. They are more likely to take quiet satisfaction in others’ suffering than to feel genuine sorrow for the sufferer.
They are also skilled at faking sympathy while concealing their satisfaction at your misfortune.
What Is Empathy in Psychology
- Empathy is our ability to vicariously experience feelings and understand the situations of another (Hoffman, 2007).
- Empathy can be of three types: cognitive empathy (also called perspective-taking), affective or emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy.
- Psychologists see empathy as an act, a skill, a state, and a personality trait. It is something that can be learned and developed.
- The Hogan Empathy Scale (Hogan, 1969) and the Multidimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (Caruso & Mayer, 1998) are two tools used to measure it.
Frans de Waal, a well-known researcher, describes empathy as a Russian doll with many layers: intellect, recognition, and imitation, built around a central core of emotion.
FAQs
1. Can a narcissist ever feel genuine empathy?
Narcissistic empathy is mostly limited to perspective-taking. They can understand another person’s point of view without feeling similar emotions. Research found that high-scoring narcissistic personalities tend to feel less motivated to take others’ perspectives even when they are capable of it (Lee & Kang, 2020). So the deficit is often motivational as much as it is neurological.
2. What type of empathy do narcissists lack?
Narcissists lack both affective (emotional) empathy and compassionate empathy. They do not feel an empathic connection with others; other people’s emotions do not move them enough to sense the painful condition behind those emotions.
Narcissism functions as a defensive mechanism that blunts the emotional response to witnessing others’ distress, making genuine prosocial behavior unlikely. To compensate, they use cognitive empathy to mirror postures and gestures that mimic emotional empathy.
3. Do narcissists know they are hurting you?
Yes. Narcissists understand when they hurt you. They often actively map your weak spots so they can deploy them precisely when it causes the most damage. What they lack is the emotional response that would compel most people to stop. Awareness of your pain does not produce guilt or compassion in them.
4. Do narcissists apologize?
Narcissists find it extremely difficult to apologize directly. Most lack the stable self-esteem required to admit fault and ask for forgiveness. When they do make amends, it typically takes the form of reparative gestures (extravagant gifts, grand plans) rather than a direct acknowledgment of what they did wrong.
5. Can you teach empathy to a narcissist?
Research suggests narcissists can engage empathy if sufficiently motivated to take another’s perspective. But this empathy is conditional. They cannot activate it automatically, especially emotionally or compassionately. It requires deliberate effort and, usually, a direct personal benefit.
“Narcissists always seem to be looking for sympathy and empathy from you. Because they lacked those while growing up.”
6. How common is narcissism?
Anyone may carry a few narcissistic qualities; the trait itself is not rare. Real-world data shows about 1-6% of the general population may be formally diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Stinson et al., 2008). While roughly 10-12% of adults show persistent traits that fall under subclinical narcissism, enough to affect relationships and behavior, but not enough for a clinical diagnosis.
NPD is a serious mental disorder. It carries high rates of self-harming behavior (Pompili et al., 2004), which is often overlooked in popular coverage that focuses exclusively on the harm narcissists cause to others.
Final Words
Narcissists often make strong first impressions, but after repeated interactions, that shine wears off.
Group members report emotionally taxing interactions. Long-term partners report frustration with their game-playing. Much of that traces back to their lack of emotional empathy.
Empathy is sometimes called “social glue.” Narcissists, by that measure, are “socially glueless.”
√ Also Read: Vulnerable Narcissism: The Not-So-Dark Side of Narcissism
√ Please share this with someone.
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