Empathy plays a critical role in fostering and maintaining social relations. Narcissists lack empathy, and this may account for their interpersonal failures. But why do narcissists lack empathy? Are they incapable, or is change possible? Three studies addressed this question. Study 1 showed that the link between narcissism and low empathy generalizes to a specific target person presented in a vignette. The effect was driven by maladaptive narcissistic components (i.e., entitlement, exploitativeness, exhibitionism). Study 2 examined the effect of perspective-taking (vs. control) instructions on self-reported responses to a video. Study 3 examined the effect of the same manipulation on autonomic arousal (heart rate [HR]) during an audio-recording. Perspective-taking ameliorated negative links between maladaptive narcissism and both self-reported empathy and HR. That is, narcissists can be moved by another's suffering, if they take that person's perspective. The findings demonstrate that narcissists' low empathy does not reflect inability, implying potential for intervention.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 230. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 December 2025.
All research outputs
#203,423
of 32,932,292 outputs
Outputs from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
#136
of 3,383 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,363
of 264,078 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
#3
of 33 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,932,292 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,383 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 43.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 264,078 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 33 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
