Humanity is chasing narcissists, but narcissists are faster.
New findings on those with narcissistic personalities reveal they do develop greater compassion with age — but they never quite shake their inflated sense of self-importance, according to psychological experts for BBC News.
“Clearly, some individuals may change more strongly, but generally, you wouldn’t expect someone you knew as a very narcissistic person to have completely changed when you meet them again after some years,” Dr. Ulrich Orth, from the University of Bern in Switzerland, told the outlet.
Orth’s recent study of over 37,000 people showed that those who were more narcissistic as children usually stayed that way throughout adulthood, despite learning to compensate for their innate lack of empathy.
Narcissism is a highly common personality component referring to the quality of being highly self-absorbed. Experts agree that everyone exhibits narcissistic traits at times, but it’s those with the biggest egos could be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). People with NPD operate with the fundamental belief that they are inherently superior to others — which can come off overtly as arrogance, selfishness and grandiosity — and use emotional manipulation and exploitation to get the admiration they crave.
“These consequences do not only affect the person themselves, but also the wellbeing of individuals with whom they interact, such as partners, children, friends, co-workers, and employees,” Orth explained.
Published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, the survey of 51 previous studies involving participants aged eight to 77 aimed to understand whether wisdom and maturity had a positive impact on lifelong narcissists.
Researchers outlined three types of narcissists for the study: Agentic (superiority), antagonistic (envy) and neurotic (shame).
Generally, narcissism scores declined as participants aged. In spite of growth, however, those who were more narcissistic than average than children remained more than average as adults.
“This was true even across very long periods of time, which suggests that narcissism is a stable personality trait,” Orth said in a separate statement for the American Psychological Association.
Understanding how narcissists mature is critical to identifying interventions to help mitigate their capacity for harm.
“These findings have important implications given that high levels of narcissism influence people’s lives in many ways,” Orth continued. “Both the lives of the narcissistic individuals themselves and, maybe even more, the lives of their families and friends.”
