Are narcissists emotionally intelligent?

Somebody asked me whether I thought narcissists are emotionally intelligent or not.  It’s a complicated answer.

I think in many ways they are extremely emotionally intelligent — especially in how they read social situations and manipulate them.  But on the other hand, they have such a dreadful paucity of self-awareness.

So, while they may read social situations like a mastermind, they’ve got absolutely no interest in self-examination.  This makes it tricky on the subject of emotional intelligence.

Most narcissists are intentionally bending the game to suit themselves.  Very few are clueless to their own wiles.

They know the abuse they’re procuring, but they don’t see it as abuse, because they feel it’s their entitlement to exploit others’ empathy, which just reveals their lack of empathy.

On the other hand, they are well aware that what they’re doing is wrong, because they orchestrate elaborate machinations to cover their tracks.

When we know that the narcissist chooses to behave in ways that deliberately upset, undermine and abuse people, we know that it’s not a low emotional intelligence we’re dealing with.

The fact that the narcissist is ahead of the curve suggests some intelligence for manipulation—to manipulate the emotions of unsuspecting others.

This cannot, however, be considered an example of emotional intelligence — the manipulation of others’ emotions.  Somehow, it’s on another scale.

Emotional intelligence is normally considered an asset for the person possessing it, and their community.  A bit like someone being intellectually intelligent, if that person used their intelligence to rob a bank, we can well imagine the narcissist robbing us of the free expression of our emotions.

Those emotions are stolen from us when the narcissist executes their plan of social grand larceny.

Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash