
Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome? - charlieirish
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/are-narcissists-more-likely-to-experience-impostor-syndrome/
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jf-
Non-narcissist here, apparently. I do find the premise somewhat troubling. If
you’re supremely confident and never doubt yourself, even in situations where
you should, you could be described as a narcissist. And if you’re lacking in
self-confidence, and constantly think you’ll be found out, you’re also a
narcissist. And there’s probably narcissists who experience a moderate level
of self-doubt in between.

It’s more likely narcissism and self doubt are just independent variables.

~~~
nwellnhof
I think the key to understanding narcissism is that narcissists only try very
hard to appear confident but on the inside they're anything but. The
grandiosity they display is just a kind of coping mechanism.

~~~
ergothus
But there's a difference between narcissism and just covering for a lack of
self-confidence.

I'm not psychologically trained, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've
met exactly one person that I think was a narcissist. He was a jerk, but
mostly because he was utterly baffled by any concept that didn't involve him
in the center. It was an attribute completely separate from his confidence. I
feel like it is really hard to explain if you haven't met someone like that -
I was routinely gobsmacked by his reactions - every human interaction I'd had
to date had not prepared me for it.

Meanwhile, I have tons of anxiety and often cover it up with false confidence,
and our reactions to similar events were dramatically different.

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jacobmoe
TIL I'm a narcissist. Not how I expected this morning to go.

I think these kind of categories that come from psychology are useful and also
dangerous. Our innate tendency towards heuristics makes it difficult to talk
about this stuff, especially with words like "narcissist" that have strongly
negative connotations. The brain is a complicated mess. Maybe the most
complicated mess in the universe. We try to impose some order on it without
understanding it. It's true that "everyone in this room loves me" and
"everyone in this room hates me" could be manifestations of a similar
neurological configuration, and we could put the label "narcissist" on it. But
the label is somewhat arbitrary and the behavioral results are often very
different.

~~~
rrggrr
The diagnosis is not arbitrary and the lack of self-awareness those suffering
from NPD experience places them at a disadvantage at self-diagnosis. DSM
standards have moved a lot over the years, but NPD has remained largely the
same. Ask a child, love-interest or spouse of someone with NPD about the
manifestations of the condition on their lives and you'll get a remarkably
consistent story. There are two grey areas: First, NPD in women can be
confused with Asperger syndrome. Second, NPD is often accompanied (co-morbid)
with other disorders (eg. BPD).

~~~
mxiia
> First, NPD in women can be confused with Asperger syndrome.

Can you expand on this or provide some more reading for me? I believe my
mother has NPD and have, on occasion, sworn she was on the spectrum as well.

~~~
scarecrowbob
I say this as a person who has been abused by a string of relationships with
folks who almost certainly have some variation of NPD, not as a clinician. So
take this with a big 'ol grain of salt.

A lot of the epistemological problems for people who are pathologically
narcissistic come from understanding the difference between how they see
things and how other people see things.

Part of the pathology is that they have a filter set up to protect a fragile
image of themselves, and so they often don't understand why other people are
acting in some way, specifically when other people's actions are only
explicable in ways that contradict the fragile image.

They aren't able to take in information that would allow them to modify their
behavior because even mild criticism will harm their understanding of
themselves, and since that filter is strong they have a hard time knowing the
difference between useful criticisms and all the other reasons people say mean
or hurtful things to them.

This disconnection appears similarly to other pathologies where people have
issues identifying other peoples' motivations.

For instance, most people have a healthy skepticism of other people's negative
reactions: even though other people might think I'm a jerk for, say,
constantly name dropping some person some behavior, I will probably keep doing
it for a bit.

But at some point, I will (hopefully) notice the trend in negative reactions
and either rework the name dropping habit so that other people find it
interesting/relevant or understand that it's something that I should change
about myself. But if I have such a strong filter against criticism of my
identity that literally anything could harm that identity, I might not pick up
on social cues that would tell me I need to alter my behavior.

I don't know a lot about asperger syndrome, so this is totally my lay-person's
interpretation, but basically they seem similar because they both involve
dysfunctions with how people parse other peoples' behavior.

------
narrator
Anyone who has had an extended experience with a full blown narcissist would
not throw that term around so casually.

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rhacker
This is my point of view: Everyone is a narcissist maximally. It's not a
spectrum, just a maximum state that is always on, always self preserving, but
personality differs quite a bit. Personality causes others to perceive others
as being more or less narcissistic. In other words we started using the word
narcissistic to start describing personality types.

~~~
thr0awaz
no... there really are people out there that really think they're better than
you, on an existential level, and that the only reason you're better at any
one thing than them is because they haven't gotten around to doing it better
than you yet.

The short test for narcissism is: "Are you a narcissist?" Actual,
pathological, narcissists answer 'yes' so often that it's almost useful as a
diagnostic tool. Most people have some idea of their shortcomings.

~~~
barberousse
>Actual, pathological, narcissists answer 'yes' so often that it's almost
useful as a diagnostic too

Citation?

~~~
thr0awaz
[https://psychcentral.com/news/2014/08/06/it-takes-just-
one-q...](https://psychcentral.com/news/2014/08/06/it-takes-just-one-question-
to-identify-narcissism/73260.html)

(snip)

In a series of 11 experiments involving more than 2,200 people of all ages,
the researchers found they could reliably identify narcissistic people by
asking them this exact question (including the note):

To what extent do you agree with this statement: “I am a narcissist.” (Note:
The word “narcissist” means egotistical, self-focused, and vain.)

Participants rated themselves on a scale of one (not very true of me) to seven
(very true of me).

(snip)

Results showed that people’s answer to this question lined up very closely
with several other validated measures of narcissism, including the widely used
Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI).

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ravenstine
Maybe they're more likely to _report_ imposter syndrome? How exactly can we
distinguish between a self-aware narcissist who knows they have imposter-like
tendencies and someone who gets satisfaction over having a pathology that
others will be sympathetic towards? Nothing I've read here suggests an answer
to this, I think.

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motohagiography
It's notable that over the last couple decades, we've moved to where we refer
to diabetics as people with diabetes, schizophrenics as people exhibiting
symptoms of a variety of mental disorders, disabled as people with
disabilities, the obese as people coping with obesity - but narcissists,
sociopaths, and psychopaths are still othered, and yet still within the domain
of detatched clinical assessment.

These are moral assessments of character, and ones that aren't wrong to make.
But it's disingenuous to say that we have a medical definition of what is
essentially an evil tendency that we can treat (and presumably, eradicate) as
a disease.

The more literary theme among the obvious narcissists and psycho's I've met
was they lacked self acceptance, and were pathologically actuated by the
approval of others, particularly imagined others. They filtered their
experiences to only ones that reflected a deep seated idea of a perfect and
adorable self, and they had adapted to ferociously attack anything that
threatened this perfect and vulnerable self image.

That's not a disease, it's poor parenting exacerbated by a culture that
enables it.

People can learn and change, and they do it every day. The popular pseudo
scientific discourse around narcissists and sociopaths is politically
dangerous and in many cases, I suspect motivated by a purifying urge that is a
much deeper evil.

~~~
barberousse
This. I mean the term Marx would've used here is reification, we are so
terrified to confront our actual practices with one another that we'd rather
make out the sum of those practices to appear to be an individual pathology,
separate and irresolvable from the domain of how I actually raise my children,
their emotional cultivation, or treat others, or even how I relate to myself
(which tends to loop back to childhood...).

For those who haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend the film Nightcrawler,
which is essentially about the enablement of what we call
narcissism/sociopathy in our media-driven society.

------
dsego
If you are interested in this topic and want to discover more about yourself
and maladaptive behaviors and coping mechanisms, a great resource for
personality disorders is the “Out of the Fog” website[1]. I also find Sam
Vaknin has written a lot of interesting stuff on covert narcissism and the
concept of narcissistic supply. (he also has a youtube channel) [2]

I feel that covert NPD shares a lot of traits with BPD.

[1] [https://outofthefog.website](https://outofthefog.website) [2]
[http://samvak.tripod.com](http://samvak.tripod.com)

~~~
ModernMech
> I feel that covert NPD shares a lot of traits with BPD.

True in a sense some of the symptoms of mania can be the same, but NPD is much
different from BPD in that BPD is a mental illness that can be managed with
medication and behavioral/situational adjustments. BPD sufferers can be
completely normal people under the right conditions.

~~~
Amygaz
I don’t know about medication, but CBT should work on N

------
50
Yikes. I’m thinking about how labels and identifications like these might harm
us. As naive as it may sound, I think when you identify with something, you
are constrained within that indentification, not aware you are really not that
and therefore limited. I know we live in a society but yikes.

~~~
barberousse
Thing is, its "names", for lack of a better term, all the way down

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knaik94
This seems to share the same sentiment I have been hearing from a lot of
places recently, the only person you should be comparing yourself to is the
past version of yourself.

~~~
kmarc
Wow, this is the most concise and deepest thought I read lately.

Thanks!

(Also this needs more upvote)

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gowld
This just smells like using the same word for two different concept, and then
conflating them. Thinking that the world only exists for your own benefit, and
thinking that you don't fit in the world, both have an aspect of separating
yourself from the world, but it's more harm than help to lump them together.
If "narcissism" means having _any_ sense of self identity, then the word means
very little as a pathology.

~~~
erikpukinskis
A maximum ratio of economic growth to number of controlling board members
occurs when all self identity is destroyed, and people allow command
structures (at work) and advertising (at home) to dictate their self
conception.

So yes, under capitalism any knowledge of the self in the working class is
pathological.

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adjkant
While there's much to debate when it comes to generally how useful, harmful,
or dangerous labels are (I think they are all 3 in different ways personally),
I think there's a highly uderrated takeaway in the last paragraph:

> "To be clear: these results do not invalidate the fact that most of us
> experience feelings of impostorism or doubt our ability to make desired
> impressions on others at various points in our life. Instead, they suggest
> that no matter where any of us are on the impostor syndrome curve, one
> potential route to realizing your best self is through dialing down your
> excessive preoccupation with how you are being perceived by others. Don't
> worry about being an impostor; worry about being authentic."

------
Amygaz
Psycopaths are an example of covert narssicists, not exclusively but it’s an
example.

This article gets it wrong. Vulnerable narcissists are still needy,
egotistical and vain people. It’s just that they are introvert. Instead of
presuming that any higher being can go back to sleep when they wake up, the
introvert N will wonder if it would be possible for other people to recognize
that they have everything under control and should just be trusted.

I’ve be raised by a N:bro and N:mom, not the introvert types, and I sure hope
this article is a joke or written by a N looking for excuses!

Edit: few typos. I probably missed a few more. I am fuming!

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tayo42
I never understood the difference between narcisms and self confidence. The
same way this article makes it unclear what the difference between being
insecure and no self confidence and narcism. Is insecurity a disorder?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You can lack self-confidence and still have empathy for the welfare of others.

Narcissists see other people entirely as threats or opportunities, not as
separate individuals with lives and needs of their own.

They literally have no concept of empathy. Their actions are motivated by a
need to destroy and devalue any perceived threats to their fragile self-image,
while cultivating people, projects, and situations that make them look and
feel good in front of the imaginary audience that judges everything they do.

There's no ability to think of others as equals. Everyone is either better or
worse than a narcissist - not just in a passing way, but absolutely,
infinitely, and obsessively.

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smogcutter
Some pretty engrossing material on narcissism:
[https://thelastpsychiatrist.com](https://thelastpsychiatrist.com)

The blog is long defunct, but the archives are definitely worth a read.

------
kraig911
Well great now I'm also a Narcissist today too :|

~~~
dsego
Do you have any of the listed behaviors and traits?

[http://outofthefog.website/personality-
disorders-1/2015/12/6...](http://outofthefog.website/personality-
disorders-1/2015/12/6/narcissistic-personality-disorder-npd)

------
nwellnhof
From my experience with "grandiose" narcissists, they share most of the traits
of "vulnerable" narcissists, but they try very hard not to show them. If you
want to understand their behavior, you have to realize that beneath their
self-confident facade, these are extremely vulnerable people as well.

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ouid
"Instead, worry about being authentic."

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wellpast
I've always _wanted_ to be a Narcissist, for years have strived to become one,
but I never quite feel like I _am_ one. I always feel like a wannabe-
Narcissist, like an impost....

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timr
Statistically, half of all people with Impostor Syndrome aren't suffering from
a syndrome at all. They're actually not very competent.

~~~
gizmo385
> Statistically

You got anything to back up that claim? That sounds like a pretty big
conclusion that you're jumping to without evidence.

~~~
timr
_" You got anything to back up that claim? That sounds like a pretty big
conclusion that you're jumping to without evidence."_

It's not a "claim". It's literally the null hypothesis: two traits are assumed
to be uncorrelated unless proven otherwise.

If you want to claim that a sense of "impostor syndrome" is actually
indicative of increased skill, it's your job to prove it.

~~~
tanderson92
It's also not true that because only two outcomes are possible that the null
hypothesis is a 50/50 split between them.

~~~
timr
There are more than two outcomes. Competence is not binary.

Also, again: null hypothesis. If you want to argue that there's a positive
correlation between X & Y, you provide evidence.

