Obhi Sukhvinder S, Hogeveen Jeremy, Giacomin Miranda, Jordan Christian H
Department of Psychology and Social Brain, Body & Action Lab, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2014 Jun;40(3):920-8. doi: 10.1037/a0034056. Epub 2013 Aug 19.
Narcissism is a personality trait that has been extensively studied in normal populations. Individuals high on subclinical narcissism tend to display an excessive self-focus and reduced concern for others. Does their disregard of others have roots in low-level processes of social perception? We investigated whether narcissism is related to the automatic imitation of observed actions. In the automatic imitation task, participants make cued actions in the presence of action videos displaying congruent or incongruent actions. The difference in response times and accuracy between congruent and incongruent trials (i.e., the interference effect) is a behavioral index of motor resonance in the brain-a process whereby observed actions activate matching motor representations in the observer. We found narcissism to be negatively related to interference in the automatic imitation task, such that high narcissism is associated with reduced imitation. Thus, levels of narcissism predict differences in the tendency to automatically resonate with others, and the pattern of data we observe suggests that a key difference is that high narcissists possess an improved ability to suppress automatic imitation when such imitation would be detrimental to task performance. To the extent that motor resonance is a product of a human mirror system, our data constitute evidence for a link between narcissistic tendencies and mirror system functioning.
自恋是一种在正常人群中得到广泛研究的人格特质。亚临床自恋程度高的个体往往表现出过度的自我关注和对他人关注的减少。他们对他人的漠视是否源于社会认知的低层次过程呢？我们研究了自恋是否与对观察到的动作的自动模仿有关。在自动模仿任务中，参与者在显示一致或不一致动作的动作视频面前做出提示动作。一致和不一致试验之间的反应时间和准确性差异（即干扰效应）是大脑中运动共振的行为指标——这一过程中，观察到的动作会激活观察者脑中匹配的运动表征。我们发现自恋与自动模仿任务中的干扰呈负相关，即高自恋与模仿减少相关。因此，自恋水平预示着自动与他人产生共鸣倾向的差异，我们观察到的数据模式表明，一个关键差异在于，当这种模仿对任务表现不利时，高自恋者具备更强的抑制自动模仿的能力。就运动共振是人类镜像系统的产物而言，我们的数据构成了自恋倾向与镜像系统功能之间存在联系的证据。
