How to Stop Narcissism

Narcissism scores are higher in individualistic cultures compared with more collectivistic cultures.

This spring I met an interesting woman who has lived and worked with horses for years. She told me a story about a time a friend asked her to let their horse live with her herd. The new horse was antagonistic and unpleasant to the other horses. The lead mare, who I learned, is in charge of herd harmony, tried to correct him gently with some nips. New horse ignored it and kept on with bad behavior. Lead mare became sterner and bit new horse to get him to pay attention. New horse ignored once again.

The herd owner, who was observing all of this, separated new horse and called her friend. “You have to come and get your horse,” she said. “He’s not adjusting to the herd and I don’t want to see this escalate.” She told me that the likely next step on the part of the lead mare would probably be quite bad. “Healthy horse herds don’t tolerate this kind of behavior. They give warnings, and if it doesn’t work, they simply put a stop to it.”

Research on narcissism seems to indicate that collectivist cultures tend to behave somewhat like healthy horse herds. That is, giving stern feedback early on if someone behaves narcissistically, and setting boundaries around antagonistic behavior, knowing it is bad for the community.

More individualistic cultures don’t tend to have the same sort of checks and balances to toxic, narcissistic behavior (in fact, it is all too often rewarded). And thus, it proliferates. Instead of seeing the narcissist as damaging to the community, they are tolerated or even admired.

Horses, on the other hand, have no issue with seeing things for what they are and dealing with them appropriately. And I believe this is actually the answer to stopping the spread of narcissism. Ok, we don’t need to bite them, but we do need to stop tolerating and enabling them.

Stopping narcissism is actually not terribly complicated. It just takes the personal, institutional and cultural courage of a lead mare who, for the sake of her herd, is simply not going to put up with this kind of nonsense.

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This post was previously published on But Now I Know Your Name and is republished on Medium.

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