New research examined narcissists’ social metaperceptions (what they think others think of them). Narcissists did not necessarily overestimate how positively others viewed them. But people high in narcissistic admiration, leadership, and grandiosity tended to think they were viewed positively.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/close-encounters/202409/do-narcissists-overestimate-how-much-people-like-them
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I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19485506241263636
From the linked article:
KEY POINTS
– New research examined narcissists’ social metaperceptions (what they think others think of them).
– Narcissists did not necessarily overestimate how positively others viewed them.
– Narcissists tended to believe others viewed them positively, especially on intelligence and status.
Their results showed that narcissists did not tend to overestimate how positively people saw them. There was no tendency for narcissists’ metaperceptions to be consistently better than the impressions that they made. What the researchers did find was that people high in narcissistic admiration, leadership, and grandiosity tended to think they were viewed positively. This was especially true for agentic traits, like intelligence and extraversion. Those who were high in narcissistic rivalry or entitlement actually tended to assume that others saw them negatively on communal traits. Whether others viewed them positively or not, narcissists thought that others saw them in the ways that accord with their own narcissistic values: Agentic and successful socially, but not particularly warm or caring.
This research suggests that narcissists are not necessarily misperceiving the impressions others have of them. They may often make positive impressions because they work hard to be perceived as high-status and successful. In fact, other research shows that they do excel at making good first impressions, so this might explain why they don’t overestimate how positively people view them — they simply work hard to be admired, and sometimes succeed.