How Narcissists May Groom Bystanders to Abandon Scapegoats

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Narcissists typically do not care about the truth. They care only about their narrative, which they intentionally devise to avoid accountability and to protect their deep insecurities, fragile egos, and calculated public personas from any criticism and feedback. They are the royals of deflection, prepared to rebut with excuse after excuse for why their abuse, bullying, and/or relational aggression is/was justified.

Most narcissists will stop at nothing to rationalize why their hurtful and traumatizing actions make sense. Glaring hypocrisy won't embarrass them, neither will indisputable evidence that exposes their lies and embellishments, nor will backlash for toeing the line between villainizing and dehumanizing. Their only goal is to feel like they are winning and to look like a winner in front of a crowd.

Essentially, many narcissists are in a race with targets to win the most allies, and they don't play fair. Instead, they usually play hero and victim at the same time, exaggerating as much as possible to make themselves look innocent and to make others view their target with contempt and suspicion.

The predictable pattern—the narcissist's commitment to discrediting and attacking the reputation of targets—deserves much more attention in resources on narcissistic abuse and bullying.

Oftentimes, informational tools focus on narcissistic character flaws like denialism, dishonesty, entitlement, envy, hypocrisy, and insecurity. These awareness-raising campaigns might also describe victimization tactics like blameshifting/deflecting, gaslighting, projecting, and provoking-then-pathologizing (e.g., reactive abuse).

Yet, social sabotage is as serious of a narcissistic abuse tactic as any other. In fact, some survivors of narcissistic abuse and bullying attest that being actively—sometimes aggressively—discredited, distrusted, and disbelieved was as traumatizing as the one-on-one attacks directly from the narcissist.

The calculated sabotage and ostracization—compounded by the stigma of being a survivor—left many recovering victims feeling alone and helpless, as if they had been communally exiled at the narcissist's command.

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This feeling of exile can even manifest as psychosomatic illness. One study, for example, found that social rejection—to the degree that it feels like abandonment—can activate the same region of the brain that processes and transmits physical pain signals.

Relatedly, evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists have established that humans are a distinctly social species, so much so that humans have a "social brain."

In 2018, for example, U.S. poker player, Rich Alati, tapped out of a 30-day bet that he could survive 30 days alone and in total darkness, while living in a small room with a bed, fridge, and bathroom. He received $64,200 instead of $100,000 because he quit on the 20th day.

His breaking point corroborates research suggesting that long periods of social isolation may correlate with succumbing to cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline (e.g., brain atrophy/lower brain volume, poor memory, or white matter lesions), and even inflammation.

This context puts the narcissist's social sabotage in perspective, and highlights just how damaging relational aggression can be.

According to various social psychologists, relational aggression can be defined as:

1. "Harming peers' relationships through exclusion, rumors, or manipulation."
2. "A covert form of aggression, defined as a set of manipulative behaviors used to inflict harm on another through damage to relationships, threat of damage, or both."
3. "Intent to harm another person through non-physical injury to or manipulation of relationships—covertly (i.e., spreading rumors, gossiping, ignoring, excluding) or overtly (e.g., directly telling a peer, "If you don't do what I say, I won't be your friend."

Three of the most common narcissistic abuse/bullying tactics associated with relational aggression include triangulation, smear campaigns, and the use flying of monkeys.

Source: Cottonbro/Pexels

Examining these in detail is beyond the scope of this post, but a through line is recruiting others to surveil a target (e.g., cyberstalking with stealth accounts), recruiting others to harm or harass a target via mobbing and scapegoating, or recruiting to side against a target, thereby abandoning them (e.g., collective silent treatment).

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Narcissists engage in relational aggression not just to appear blameless, but also to convince themselves that they are blameless. They interpret social power as a form of social proof that justifies their aggressive and harmful self-righteousness. That is, the greater the mob, the more convinced they are that they are innocent, despite their unconscionable psychological abuse, bullying, and manipulation.

This self-deception likely explains why narcissists are so big on loyalty (e.g., creating an echo chamber of enablers that does not burst their bubble). They feel betrayed by anyone who filters their embellishments and exaggerations through healthy skepticism, anyone who attempts to humanize or empathize with their targets, and especially anyone whose perspective-taking points out their own insecurities, projections, and manipulation/victimization tactics. They want bystanders and associates to take sides based on loyalty, not contextualization, critical thinking, or perspective-taking.

Alarmingly, this self-serving [il]logic overlaps with the mentality of authoritarians who recruit allies with an us-versus-them mentality, propaganda, and fear-mongering. And, to be sure, this metaphor of authoritarianism is not hyperbole—it is research-backed and exactly how narcissistic social sabotage, relational aggression, and grooming should be framed to discourage their addiction to escalating chaos and winning at any cost.