You are what you read: Antagonistic narcissism predicts increased preference for antisocial and reduced preference for prosocial information

Abstract

While narcissistic individuals tend to exhibit more antisocial (rather than prosocial) behavior in social contexts and evaluate antisocial information more positively, it is unclear how they first come to select social information. This is important to understand as it has bearing on their subsequent behavior. We hypothesized that individuals higher (vs. lower) on antagonistic narcissism select less prosocial and more antisocial information. In two studies, we investigated how antagonistic narcissism affects one’s choice of news headlines. We also examined narcissists’ social motives, (affective) empathy, and sensation seeking as potential underlying mechanisms (S2). Higher antagonistic narcissism predicted selection of less prosocial (S1–S2) and more antisocial information (S1), both of which were explained by lower empathy and higher sensation seeking (S2).