Today's Tuesday • 9 mins read
Do narcissists have no empathy at all, or do they feel empathy for certain people in their lives?
Many believe that a narcissist can feel empathy, and there is some truth to that idea, even if it appears odd at first. The truth, according to psychology, is a little more complex.
Narcissism exists on a spectrum, which means some people may have healthy amounts of it (positive narcissism), others may have too much of it, and still others may have severe forms like narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
In fact, many narcissistic people behave normally most of the time. But when their narcissistic needs get triggered, they can get very self-centric and insensitive to other people’s pain.
You can’t stop this full-on narcissist with subtle hints like looks of discomfort or disbelief.
Is that because they misread or ignore social signals, or do they lack empathy?
What Type of Empathy Do Narcissists Have?
By definition, a narcissist lacks empathy, but there’s a subtle depth to that. They lack emotional empathy. But most of them seem to have 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 Does Cognitive Empathy Make Narcissists So Effective?
That cognitive empathy makes them skilled at reading others’ thoughts and emotions without actually feeling them. And this single empathy type makes narcissists especially effective.
It lets them predict and manipulate people’s responses, appear consoling, or use others strategically while remaining emotionally detached.
As a result, while they may notice your pain, they do not see it as something they need to experience themselves or be motivated to help you with.
Another way to say it: your emotions do not trigger similar emotions in the narcissist.
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.
Do Narcissists Fake Empathy?
Yes, narcissists can fake empathy. They may display “surface” empathy, which are learned or strategic responses that mimic empathy without genuine feeling.
Narcissists fake empathy to fool you into thinking that they can respond to your emotions, feel your feelings, and act with compassion when you need them.
Their capacity for cognitive empathy allows them to understand what you think and feel. It lets them figure out how you can be better manipulated by hurt, threats of abandonment, love, or high praise.
And this is where they use their fake empathy skills. They often train themselves to be good at faking emotional empathy.
What they do is this:
- Use their cognitive empathy to figure out what emotion they should be expressing.
- Then they use their acting skills to mimic that emotion to fit in.
So, while they can fairly accurately read what’s going on in your mind, they cannot feel the same emotions as you are going through.
- They can correctly read thoughts like, “This person is planning how to escape this conversation right now.”
- However, they do not have feelings like, “I am overwhelming this person with my achievement stories, so I need to shut up.”
Narcissists can mimic your emotions, but cannot mirror them well. So, 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, as well as 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).
However, 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:
- Narcissism exists on a spectrum, so the same person can be highly narcissistic in some situations and less so in others.
- A narcissist may display “surface” empathy, which is a learned or strategic response that mimics compassion without genuine feeling.
For example, a narcissist may comfort a partner or close friend when it preserves the relationship or their image, yet remain indifferent when helping offers no personal benefit.
Narcissists often choose empaths for intimate roles like partners and friends since they are easier to manipulate. Then they learn from them how to show empathy and use the skill to achieve their own goals.
Why do narcissists struggle with a lack of empathy?
The root of narcissists’ lack of empathy may lie in their troubled childhood. They usually couldn’t develop the full range of empathy skills because they were mistreated as children.
Their narcissism (extreme self-love) often evolves as an abused child’s defense against parental abuse. That hurt child grew callous and indifferent to their own pain, and later to that of others.
When a parent neglects a child, pushes them away when they seek love or attention, or mistreats, blames, and abuses them, the child’s brain constructs a false world for itself. For narcissists, this internal world is more real than their external world.
The fake self serves as the future narcissist’s defense against insults and abuse. It builds up delusions of grandiosity, self-importance, and apathy (the opposite of empathy).
- Did you know there are six types of narcissists?
How to deal with a narcissist with no empathy?
The best way to deal with a narcissist who doesn’t have empathy, and most narcissists don’t, is not to deal with them at all. Go no contact with them.
If that is not possible, then the second-best way is to give them the “gray rock treatment” to demotivate them from engaging with you.
Another way is to show them that they have power over you. If you listen to their tall tales and validate their feelings without leaking your disbelief, they will believe they are in control.
Do Narcissists Feel Sympathy?
Narcissists understand sympathy, which is a feeling of pity or sorrow for another’s suffering.
But their sympathies are profoundly misdirected; they will likely take pleasure in others’ suffering rather than feel pained for the sufferer.
Also, they are good at faking sympathy while also concealing their enjoyment of it.
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 (perspective taking), affective (emotional), and compassionate.
- Psychologists see empathy as an act, a skill, a state, and also a personality trait. It is something that can be learned and honed.
- Hogan Empathy Scale (Hogan, 1969) and the Multidimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (Caruso & Mayer, 1998) are two tools to measure empathy.
Frans de Waal, a well-known researcher, likens empathy to a Russian doll with many layers: intellect, recognition, and imitation around a central core of emotion.
Who is an empath?
An empath is a person who feels more empathy than the average person. Their heightened empathic capacity, which allows them to quickly sense the emotions of those around them, is unexplainable by conventional science. It often pushes them to help others without being asked.
By the way, the word “empath” is looked down upon by psychologists. What comes close is Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs).
Judith Orloff, who wrote Thriving as an Empath: 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People, says empaths are “emotional sponges” who absorb the world’s joys and stresses. She says empaths lack barriers (that most of us have and use) to shield themselves from emotional overstimulation.
FAQs
1. Can a narcissist be an empath?
Narcissistic empathy is mostly limited to perspective-taking. That is, they can understand another person’s point of view without reflecting similar emotions.
However, this study found that high-scoring narcissistic personalities tend to feel less motivated to take others’ perspectives (Lee & Kang, 2020).
2. What type of empathy do narcissists lack?
Empathy can be of three types: cognitive (perspective taking), affective (emotional), and compassionate. 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 their painful condition.
Narcissists are incapable of prosocial behavior (that is, unable to act out of empathy) because narcissism is a defensive mechanism that blunts emotional response to witnessing others’ distress.
To compensate for their lack of emotional empathy, they use their cognitive empathy to mirror postures and gestures to mimic emotional empathy.
3. Do narcissists know they are hurting you?
Narcissists understand when they hurt you. In fact, they spend their time hunting for and gathering your shortcomings and weak spots, so they can hurt you at your most vulnerable points to cause the most damage.
Their awareness of your pain, however, does not bother them or compel them to respond with kindness or compassion, and stop their act.
4. Do narcissists apologize?
Narcissistic people find it extremely hard to apologize verbally. They never admit to their guilt or offer an opportunity to discuss the situation.
This is because most narcissists lack the strong self-esteem to admit they were wrong, so they are sorry and want to be forgiven. Instead, the usual narcissistic act of apology involves reparative acts such as buying extravagant gifts.
5. Can you teach empathy to a narcissist?
According to research, narcissists can learn empathy if sufficiently motivated to see the world from another person’s perspective.
However, they empathize only when they are told to or when it lies in their self-interest. They cannot automatically be empathic, especially emotionally and compassionately.
“Narcissists always seem to be looking for sympathy and empathy from you. Because they lacked those while growing up.”
Final Words
Anyone, or perhaps all of us, may have a few narcissistic qualities.
That said, narcissism is quite common. About 1-6% of the general population meet the formal diagnosis for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and roughly 10-12% of adults have persistent traits that may fall under subclinical narcissism.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a clinical diagnosis and a serious mental disorder with high self-harm rates (Pompili et al., 2004).
√ Also Read: Vulnerable Narcissism: The Not-So-Dark Side of Narcissism
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