Psychologists have focused on a number of eating habits that could provide a clue that the person sitting across the table might simply be a narcissist.
They discovered that eating meat was a A telltale sign linked to personality disorder, particularly if the person provides a “hierarchical justification” such as “humans are at the top of the food chain,” the researchers said.
Scientists theorized that narcissists’ preference for meat was due to “Dark Triad” personality traits “associated with more negative attitudes toward animals.”
They noted that “psychopathy is also linked to behaviors that demonstrate cruelty toward animals.”
A performative preference for healthy foods in social situations was another trait associated with narcissists and a tendency to overestimate the health benefits of treats like red wine and dark chocolate, as well as so-called “superfoods,” in private.
“Grandiose narcissists exhibit a strong desire to maintain a pretentious self-image,” the researchers found, leading to “increased attention to health-related risks when narcissists were exposed to a social environment.”
However, many of these distinctions between narcissistic and ordinary eating habits disappeared when the researchers looked exclusively at one woman.
This divergence between the sexes could be related to past evidence suggesting that “dieting may function primarily as a female strategy in mating and competition for status,” as theorized by a team of psychologists in China.
According to a growing body of research, performative or conspicuous preferences for healthy foods when eating in social situations were a trait linked to narcissists, including tendencies to overestimate the health benefits of sweets, such as red wine and dark chocolate. , and ‘superfoods’.
For carnivores, research linking narcissism to meat consumption came from a series of studies published by German psychologist Dr. Rayna Sariyska-Garvels and her colleagues in 2019.
His work focused not only on the clinical definition of narcissism, but also on related traits of the “Dark Triad”, such as manipulative behavior or “Machiavellianism” and psychopathy.
Dr. Sariyska-Garvels’ work linked eating habits to narcissism by tracking seven core emotional systems that are detectable in the brain and Based on neurobiological evidence.: search, care, play, lust, anger, fear and sadness.
Of these seven emotional systems, “seeking” and “nurturing” were strongly associated with fruit and vegetable consumption, while the other five (“play,” “lust,” “anger,” “fear,” and “sadness”) were strongly associated with the consumption of fruits and vegetables. No.
“Beware, sadness (and) fear,” the team wrote in the magazine. Frontiers in psychology‘were negatively associated with the consumption of red meat and pork.’
“Anger,” on the other hand, a core emotion more linked to narcissism and other Dark Triad traits such as Machiavellianism and psychopathy, was “positively associated with meat consumption,” according to Dr. Sariyska-Garvels and his co-authors.
A total of 1,140 participants participated in the first half of the study and 444 participants in the second half, each of whom completed an ‘Eating Behavior Questionnaire’, an ‘Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale’ test, and a ‘Eating Behavior Questionnaire’ test. Short dark triad scale’. .
People who scored at least 3.08 on a narcissism scale of one to seven perceived much greater health risks in a durian fruit when exposed to the fruit in a social situation (figure above). The scientists chose the Asian fruit because it was unknown to most Western test subjects, allowing them to better control the information.
However, as with other studies, this apparent link was only present when the male study subjects were taken into account.
A 2022 study found that male narcissists showed a greater tendency toward “uncontrolled eating” (38.9 percent correlation) and “emotional eating” (30.8 percent correlation).
“One explanation for the results obtained,” wrote psychologist Dr. Liping Shi, lead author of the study, “is that narcissism is positively associated with impulsivity.”
But the Dark Triad trait of Machiavellianism actually helped women avoid the “reckless eating behaviors” documented in similarly manipulative men, Dr. Shi noted in his 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Dr. Shi attributed this to two factors, the first being social pressure on women to be thin.
The second stems from previous studies that “found that those high in Machiavellianism have more strategic planning and a longer-term orientation.”
“Perhaps these characteristics can promote a slow living strategy,” Dr. Shi wrote, “and thus decrease uncontrolled eating behaviors.”
However, an investigation in the journal Psychology and Marketing The past year brings a note of caution for those hoping to overtly detect the narcissism of a friend, loved one, or colleague through the person’s eating habits.
While narcissists seemed to be overly optimistic about the supposed health benefits of foods, including dubiously healthy treats like wine, chocolate, and nuts, their tendency to overindulge seems to affect only privately.
In the case of chocolate, narcissistic study participants were 25 percent more likely to view chocolate as healthier, but especially so in private.
The explanation is that while narcissists are often interested in getting rich or enjoying their hedonistic pleasures, they are also status-seeking and wary of “threats to their self-image,” according to researchers Renaud Lunardo and Jana Gross.
“Individuals high in narcissism in social situations adopt a self-image protection strategy,” Lunardo and Gross wrote, “focusing more on dietary health hazards and, consequently, abstaining more from consuming such foods.”
Therefore, those looking for dietary clues for a narcissist may need to be as cunning and manipulative as a narcissist.
Narcissists were also more likely to overconsume foods they perceived as high-octane stimulants that could “help achieve performance goals,” according to their study, which Lunardo and Gross attribute to the competitive nature of the personality type.
“Some foods high in calories, sugar and fat that can be perceived as energy or ‘fuel’ for the body,” they also noted, “are attractive to narcissists.”
This category included products classified as “superfoods”, according to research published in the Consumer Research Journal – anything that gives the narcissist an advantage in the status game and competition for resources, they argue.
To further prove their point, Lunardo and Gross also tested their public/private theory with a type of food that their test subjects were unfamiliar with, to avoid any preconceived notions of health: the durian fruit.
The scientists, who teach at the KEDGE Business School in France, chose the Asian fruit because it was unfamiliar to most Western test subjects, allowing them to better control the flow of information.
Participants who scored at least 3.08 on a narcissism scale of one to seven perceived much greater health risks in a durian fruit when they were exposed to it in a social situation than in private, which helped confirm the narcissist’s obsession with social status.