Psychologists have explained why narcissists are more likely to feel rejected.

The feeling of societal rejection is subjective and based on an individual's perception of social signals. While others may intentionally ignore individuals, there are times when some feel rejected even when that is not the case.

Social psychology experts from the University of Basel (Switzerland), in collaboration with colleagues from Germany and the USA, hypothesized that individuals with the so-called grandiose type of narcissism, characterized by an unwarranted sense of superiority, egocentrism, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, may more frequently experience feelings of ostracism.

According to the researchers, this tendency is related not only to the likely desire of others to avoid narcissists due to their specific personality traits and behaviors but also to the heightened sensitivity of narcissists to social signals and their inclination to interpret ambiguous situations as ostracism. Additionally, narcissism can be both a cause and a consequence of ostracism: frequent rejection by others can over time intensify narcissistic traits.

To test their hypotheses, psychologists conducted a series of studies. One of these, based on a sample of 1,592 individuals gathered through the German Socio-Economic Panel (German Socio-Economic Panel, SOEP), indicated that individuals with elevated levels of narcissism indeed reported more instances of rejection by others.

This trend was further confirmed in the next experiment, where 323 participants recorded in a mobile app over two weeks when they felt rejected by others. It was found that narcissists tend to exaggerate the number of ostracism instances in retrospective evaluations.

In the third and fourth studies, which included more than 2,500 participants in total, psychologists verified that narcissistic individuals are prone to interpreting ambiguous social signals as ostracism, allowing for multiple interpretations. Two additional experiments demonstrated that others tend to avoid individuals with pronounced narcissism, which exacerbates the latter's feelings of social isolation.

In the seventh and final study, psychologists tracked the relationship between ostracism and narcissism over time using long-term data from New Zealand. The specialists found that changes in the sense of rejection by others correlated with fluctuations in narcissism levels one year later, and vice versa. This confirmed the assumption that narcissistic traits can become more pronounced in the context of ostracism.

According to the authors of the new paper, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the findings highlight the complex interplay between personality traits and social experiences. Understanding these trends may aid in resolving workplace conflicts and issues arising from social isolation.