Using social cognition to understand people's grandiose narcissism

Grandiose narcissists view the world through a self‐focused lens, which influences the way they perceive and interact with others. A useful strategy for examining narcissism may be to look beyond patterns of behavior to examine the cognitions that motivate narcissists. This review summarizes the cognitive biases that underlie narcissism by exploring how narcissists process, recall, and attend to self‐ and other‐relevant information. Adopting social‐cognitive approaches to studying such processes can potentially uncover the roots of narcissistic behavior and develop greater understanding of how narcissists maintain their self‐views and why they act as they do. A closer examination of narcissists' cognitive biases may inform future interventions to help reduce people's narcissistic tendencies.