narcissist are notoriously sorry at empathizing , often to the hurt of their personal and professional relationships . So how do you get an egoist to envisage himself in someone else ’s shoes ? Believe it or not , it could be as simple as asking him to do just that .
Over at TheAtlantic , Olga Khazan reports that psychologists have long regard sub - clinical narcissists ( i.e. , otherwise functional people who just bechance to be very narcissistic , as react to mentally ill people clinically diagnosed withNarcissistic Personality Disorder ) as “ largely incorrigible . ” That is to say , “ there was nothing we could do to serve them be more empathic . ” But the results of a new bring out study lead by University of Surrey psychologist Erica Hepper suggest that getting narcissists to experience other mass ’s annoyance could be as easy as involve them to imagine that they ’re the ones suffering . In fact , this tactics had the best effect in the most egotistical multitude . Writes Khazan :
Hepper and her co - authors asked a grouping of 95 female undergrads to take [ a self-love quiz ] , and then later to see a 10 - minute documentary about Susan , a victim of spousal contumely . one-half were told to endeavor to put themselves in Susan ’s shoe ( “ Imagine how Susan feel . endeavor to take her view in the video … ” ) , while the others were told to imagine they were watching the program on TV one evening .

The field of study who were told to take Susan ’s perspective were significantly more likely to score high on empathy . In fact , the more narcissistic they were , the more the trick seemed to play .
“ I think what ’s lead on here is that people who are low on narcissism are already react to mass — telling them what to do is n’t going to increase their empathy any further , ” Hepper articulate . “ But the higher on self-love you get , the less empathy [ you feel ] . By instructing them to retrieve about it , it spark off this empathetic reply that was antecedently much weaker . ”
Read about the other two factor of the three - part study atThe Atlantic .

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