An investigation of emotion recognition ability and metacognitive judgements of emotion recognition performance in trait narcissism

Empathy deficits have been consistently found in people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and trait narcissism. However, few studies have examined underlying difficulties in social cognitive ability experienced in these individuals. This study was a preliminary investigation to determine whether individuals with higher levels of trait narcissism would experience difficulties identifying basic emotional expressions (anger, disgust, sadness, fear, happiness and surprise) and whether these individuals lack insight into their emotion perception abilities. Sixty participants aged between 18 and 35 (M = 24.17, SD = 5.26) completed the Short Dark Triad (SD3) and the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) to assess emotion perception abilities. Metacognition of emotion recognition was assessed by obtaining confidence ratings (0% to 100%) for each presented emotion. The study identified trends towards those with higher trait narcissism experiencing emotion recognition difficulties, particularly for the emotions fear, sadness and surprise. They were also found to be more overconfident in their predictions of emotion recognition ability. The results provide preliminary evidence that higher levels of trait narcissism may be related to difficulties in emotion perception ability and metacognitive functioning concerning this ability. This might contribute to the underlying associated difficulties in empathy often seen in individuals high in trait narcissism