When does favoritism become abuse? To get some answers, I turned to Google Search and Google AI. What I found from Google AI was this (written in dark red):
Favoritism, while sometimes an unintended consequence of personal preferences or rapport, can become abusive when it creates a consistently unequal and harmful environment for those not favored, impacting their well-being, opportunities, and overall sense of worth.
Here's how favoritism can cross the line into abusive behavior:
In families
Defensiveness and justifications for unfair treatment: Parents who exhibit favoritism may become defensive when confronted about their behavior, offering excuses for the preferential treatment of one child over others.
Unfavored children struggling for affirmation: One child may constantly strive for parental approval without success, while the favored child receives abundant and often undeserved affirmation and privileges.
Creating a sense of entitlement in favored children: Favored children may develop inflated views of themselves, feeling entitled and believing that rules don't apply to them, which can impact their relationships and behavior in the long run.
Diminishing self-esteem in unfavored children: Unfavored children may develop a negative self-image, feel defeated, and struggle with low self-esteem and even depression.
Excessive praise for one child and criticism for others: When a parent consistently praises one child while ignoring or criticizing others, it can create a toxic dynamic where some children feel constantly undervalued.
Negative impact on the favored child: Even favored children can experience negative consequences, such as pressure to maintain a "perfect" image, difficulty with intimate relationships, and feelings of guilt due to resentment from siblings.
Strained sibling relationships: Favoritism can lead to deep-seated resentment and jealousy among siblings, creating lasting rifts in their relationships.
In the workplace
Undermining meritocracy: When promotions, opportunities, or rewards are based on personal relationships rather than performance, it can demotivate employees and create a sense of injustice, according to Fisher College of Business.
Lowering morale and engagement: Employees who perceive favoritism may feel undervalued and disengaged, leading to decreased job satisfaction and commitment to the organization.
Leading to resentment and conflict: Favoritism can breed resentment among colleagues, potentially causing conflicts and harming teamwork.
Increased turnover: Talented individuals may leave an organization where they feel undervalued and believe they lack fair opportunities for advancement, notes the Global Coach Group.
Risk of discrimination and legal issues: When favoritism is based on protected characteristics like race, gender, age, disability, or religion, it becomes illegal discrimination.
Creating a toxic work environment: Favoritism can contribute to a toxic workplace culture where negative behaviors are normalized, impacting employee well-being and productivity.
In essence, favoritism becomes abusive when it consistently undermines an individual's worth, denies them fair opportunities, and negatively impacts their emotional and psychological well-being. It creates an environment where personal biases overshadow objective criteria and fair treatment, leading to lasting harm for those subjected to it.
But why does this happen? What does a parent get out of blatantly favoring one child over another?
For that answer, I turned to this Psychology Today article. Here is an excerpt from the article (again, written in dark red):
What is critical is that all children trust that they are loved and appreciated for what makes them special. Love is unconditional, whereas favoritism is not. Favoritism depends upon children behaving in ways that gratifies parents.
I also turned to Quora and found this:
Favouritism is in and of itself not abnormal, but favouritism that results in abandonment, comparison, and emotional neglect IS abuse.
All parents have some slight favouritism, but if they’re actively keeping a child under valued then yes.
The one thing that the answer does not include is scapegoating. If a child is scapegoated, then it can be described as an egregious form of "favoritism abuse" because it is usually a number of family members using one child for blame, blame shifting, silencing and all kinds of abuse from physical abuse, mental abuse (which includes a lot of manipulation by other family members, especially gaslighting, prejudice and many of the abuses I write about featured in the right column of this blog and continuing to this page).
But what do parents get out of it? What could possibly be a positive outcome for them, considering that these kinds of abuses can destroy their child, or at least make them depressed and retreating, and destroy the relationship with their child because what child wants to live a life of defending oneself all of the time, explaining to deaf ears, and in self-protection mode?
You can even see how favoritism could turn ugly, and into a form of abuse by siblings. It might start with the favored child keeping the scapegoat child "out of commission" or it might start with the parent. The parent might try to get the favored child to co-discipline, co-abuse or to be a co-conspirator as a way to support the parent in keeping the scapegoat under-valued, silenced, invalidated and unimportant.
This is where parental narcissism and psychopathy come into play. Here is a run down of what a parent might get out of it:
* As a Baiting Technique to get an Emotional Reaction Out of a Scapegoat, and as a Technique to Get All Siblings Fighting for "Favoritism Rewards":
Narcissists, on the whole, don't like it when they favoritize a child and their other children don't notice, or their other children are too involved with projects, friends, school, hobbies and other activities to care much. Maybe they never liked the favorite child, or they found him to be a liar, or too wrapped up with the parent to have much of a relationship with, or because they find him to be too much of a sycophant and don't respect him because of that (children and adults tend to be disgusted by the sycophantic behavior of others).
So in order for the parent to get narcissistic supply (attention), they have to "up" the obviousness of preferring one child over another.
Let's say that doesn't work either, at least in terms of "the amount" of narcissistic supply they are getting from all of their other children.
Something has to be more obvious about the favoritism to get their other children working harder for parental attention and affection.
What often happens is rewards: the golden child (the favorite) gets more rewards, and most of the other children get fewer rewards to the point where it may even be straddled this way: most rewarded (golden child), sometimes (family mascot), a little less (lost child) and none (scapegoat).
Now the children notice this because it is very obvious; it's not just a feeling the parent has of liking one child more, but a downright policy.
This may or may not spark competition between all of the siblings depending on whether and how much they are able to win this game.
Because of the rigidity of roles, no child other than the golden child wins this game very well. They can either get brutalized by their siblings, especially if "the winning" is unjust or overlooked or if there is any sycophancy involved (and usually there is), if there is any sibling abuse involved, perpetrated by the more sycophantic children (and usually there is), and if the parent always sees their child in terms of these unchanging roles (and usually they do), and if the parent only sees their children as narcissistic supply givers (and usually they do).
This is a pretty dangerous game to initiate between children, but often narcissists aren't aware of it, and they don't particularly care either because narcissistic supply from this game always comes first.
Where the baiting comes in for the scapegoat is usually in this way:
Scapegoats give up on trying to win this game or even of participating in it way before their other siblings. And the further they get from the game, the more disgusting it seems to them. Most of them, anyway. The more traumatized scapegoats don't even particularly notice the game; they have always felt more "outside of the family" than in it because of how they are treated: often with contempt. So the thinking here would go more in the direction of: "I'm not part of this game because I could never win it anyway. Mom (or Dad) hate me anyway. This game isn't even appealing to begin with. Everyone is fighting."
For those scapegoats who are disgusted by how their siblings are all stepping on each other, and over each other, and fighting with each other to get approval and rewards, these scapegoats start telling of the flaws of the game instead, which enrages most narcissistic parents because they expect their children to notice the game enough to want to compete in it, but not notice it enough where they see any flaws in the game. Also finding flaws in the game is a threat to their parent's grandiose vision of themselves as being an excellent parent.
In other words, by focusing on "the flaws of the game", it's basically saying their parent is a "manipulator", which would be true, but narcissists feel they can't be criticized without going into a rage, so into a rage they go, and often abuse the scapegoat over a perfectly healthy response to this dog-eat-dog competition between siblings.
Most scapegoats do end up revealing and talking about the game inside and outside the family. There is a reason why scapegoats are often referred to as "the truth tellers" of the family. This would be one reason. And for a family who is living in the bowels of this much narcissism, truth is not appreciated unless there are other siblings who want to drop out of the game.
So in order for the parent to get narcissistic supply from a scapegoat, they'll have to count on negative narcissistic supply instead of positive narcissistic supplies (flattery and sycophancy) that they get from their other children.
The one thing narcissists don't see is that all of this flattery and sycophancy can be a manipulation, a manipulation between siblings, and a manipulation of the parent in order to get rewards. So it teaches manipulation, and once a child adopts enough manipulative behavior, he's in danger of becoming another narcissist.
When it comes to the scapegoat, negative narcissistic supply is achieved by attacks and baiting.
The baiting and attacks go like this:
* starting erroneous arguments and erroneous blaming sessions with the scapegoat. They either pick something they "think" will elicit guilt from the scapegoat, however small, or if necessary, made up.
* aggressive emotional outbursts at the scapegoat
* blaming them when a sibling hurts them ("You brought this upon yourself!" and other sayings ... remember that scapegoating is about blame shifting, taking blame off of themselves and other family members they put on a higher hierarchy and giving it to the scapegoat).
* lots of criticism and contempt
* trying to make the scapegoat feel insignificant, or ignored, or unwanted
* trying to lecture them about negative traits they are perceived to have (some of them will be made up - common)
* trying to convince them that they are crazy (gaslighting) and that the only way to be "un-crazy" is to be a sycophant of the narcissistic parent
* starting smear campaigns about their child which have a little truth to them, but are mostly lies; telling others that their scapegoat child is crazy and should not be talked to or listened to
* for overt grandiose narcissists, trying to get the scapegoat to say "I have a great parent", and for covert vulnerable narcissists, trying to get the scapegoat to feel sorry for them. Either way, it's a pleading attempt to get the child to focus on the narcissist and the narcissist's feelings rather than on the games the narcissist is playing.
* trying anything to get scapegoats involved in the game rather than looking from the outside of it by distracting them with baiting them for negative emotional responses (which, when looked at from the outside, also adds up to being manipulated).
* for malignant narcissists, sadism and sadistic acts.
It still does not garner the results that narcissists want.
For one thing, all of this contributes to a scapegoat getting traumatized. The more traumatized they become, the more retreating they will do in terms of the parent and the game, the more disassociating they will do, the less they'll want or need approval from the parent in terms of getting any narcissistic supply for themselves.
Scapegoats tend either to be not addicted to narcissistic supply for the very reason that they are very rarely rewarded, or they are so vilified, even if falsely, and feel so entrapped in vilification and symptoms from trauma. Some scapegoats go into a radical acceptance frame of mind, keeping their own dreams alive of a better life ahead, or until they feel they can escape effectively. Some of them commit suicide, or have enough suicidal thoughts and trauma symptoms as to be largely disabled by them, mostly manifesting in obvious ways around puberty to age 16 years old.
Another reason scapegoats feel they aren't dependent on narcissistic supply, is that in contrast, their narcissistic parent may have grown up giving narcissistic supply (or approval or flattery) to their own parent, and got rewarded for it. It's the Pavlov Dog's theory.
Somehow they got rewarded a lot by someone anyway.
This also has a lot to do with why narcissists take criticism so hard (they associate it with being "unrewarded").
For scapegoats, Pavlov's Dog theory doesn't exist.
However, for the parent, they don't realize this. Thus they always expect rewards if they flatter their scapegoat, or give them some breadcrumbs as an attempt to keep them in the game, even if they are floating off into their own minds, hopes and dreams most of the time.
Why would any kind of approval or disapproval work when a parent is so wrong at assessing the scapegoat, including all of the smear campaigns which are even more wrong than anything the narcissist says directly to the scapegoat? It's an eye-rolling event for most scapegoats.
So a lot of scapegoats, maybe even a majority of them, do not look for approval from their narcissistic parent, nor care whether their narcissistic parent approves or disapproves of them, or is on yet another "bender" of disapproving of someone (and these kinds of parents are always negative on many others in their life too, and often for similar reasons, with lies and false narratives part of the story).
Thus the reason why giving or withdrawing narcissistic supply to a scapegoat (and these can be drastic yo-yo events), is because so much is made up about the scapegoat, including traits they don't have, things they don't do, words they don't say, motives they don't have, and fights they did not start. They come away from the experience feeling "not known", and "invisible", with disapprovals that have no impact other than that they are invisible.
The scapegoat, especially one who has other non-narcissistic adults in their life, is going to come away from a lot of it thinking, "Who cares what my parent thinks!"
Thus the scapegoat becomes independent minded (the most unaddicted to narcissistic supply in the whole family) and the golden child the most addicted to it.
That doesn't prove that fighting a competition game with your siblings is a good idea.
Major fail!
* Getting Sadistic Pleasure out of "Disfavoring":
Sadism can also be described as negative narcissistic supply. The narcissist or psychopath has largely given up getting positive narcissistic supply, so he (or she) counts on negative narcissistic supply: getting someone else upset, or angry, or fearful, or begging, or disgusted, or wanting justice, and the perpetrator making sure it is all in the hands of himself, that only he will control the outcome.
Narcissists who don't get much positive narcissistic supply, or have long or frequent narcissistic collapses can go psychopathic (the secondary type of psychopathy, often referred to as sociopathy).
When narcissist's shame gets activated, and when they keep falling from grace, they go into a shame-rage cycle. What this means is that when their shame is activated, they rage, unlike the rest of us who feel hurt instead. For the collapsed narcissist, this can take on a more menacing quality: revenge and retaliation, even if their victim is innocent.
If the narcissist has no remorse, and shows no empathy for having made you suffer, then they have entered the realm of psychopathic traits or psychopathic personality disorders (often referred to as Antisocial Personality Disorder).
Usually signs of sadism mean they get their narcissistic supply from a lot more negative narcissistic supply than positive narcissistic supply, particularly from instilling fear as well as unjustified and unjust punishing of their victims.
Sadism can also mean they have given up on getting positive narcissistic supply, and have decided that negative narcissistic supply will do. It's still attention, and the reward centers of the brain can react in a positive way from seeing someone afraid of them or traumatized by injustice.
Young male school shooters in their twenties are usually collapsed narcissists with heavy doses of paranoia.
Child abductors and parents who practice false imprisonment and on-going abuse of a child usually prefer negative narcissistic supply too.
For narcissists who display both grandiose narcissistic traits and psychopathic traits, they rely on positive narcissistic supply to get them into power (popularity with future faking), and then display negative calloused revenge oriented traits once in power, particularly to anyone who opposes what they are doing, in order to keep themselves in power. "Divide and conquer" is another stand-out trait you will see.
In terms of scapegoats who tend to be "unfavored", a parent who gets off on the negative emotions of a scapegoat child is going to have some psychopathic traits. The more obvious the favoritism is to the point of neglecting and abusing the scapegoat, laughing or getting calm when the scapegoat cries over issues of injustice, stonewalling when the scapegoat wants to talk about the favoritism, and in general, any kind of satisfaction that a parent gets out of the suffering of the scapegoat by the favoritism, you can bet that parent has psychopathic traits.
Complaining, and telling a parent you are hurt because of the favoritism is not going to do any good; it's how the parent gets their narcissistic supply, your being hurt over the issue. Not only will this not be resolved so that you will feel "less hurt", but the parent will "up" the favoritism, "up" the hurting to new intensities and different forms of it, and then flaunt more favoritism.
If that's not a sign of sadism and psychopathy, I don't know what is.
In addition, scapegoats who are discarded from their family after they bring up the favoritism issue, and the narcissistic parent is not showing any care or empathy for where their child is or how they are faring after the discard, and is actually acting as though they are really enjoying it, and having fun with it, and laughing about it, and deriding the scapegoat more, has psychopathic traits; you can count on it.
The presence of sadism is, unfortunately, a sign the parent is too deep into their personality disorders to change or have remorse at any time afterwards.
If they want you back (usually many years or decades after they've discarded you - that's the trend of hoovering for narcissists with psychopathic traits), and show remorse, you can almost always count on it being "fake remorse" with more egregious abuse to follow.
The only reason for this kind of parent to want you back is because they need to keep you in a scapegoat role, and feel you have escaped it too much for their comfort, or because they feel they need a scapegoat with your qualities (maybe you accepted the scapegoat role in the past more than your siblings are willing to fulfill the role).
* As a Baiting Technique to Mind-control and Brainwash:
The idea here is similar to the "competition game" with siblings to get narcissistic supply from the parent by fighting with your siblings in order to get it.
By the narcissistic parent focusing conversations with the scapegoat on everything that is right with the golden child, and why they favor them so much, they hope to influence the scapegoat to act more like the golden child. They hope that this will mean the scapegoat will be constantly searching for approval and affection from the parent just like the golden child is, constantly seeking positive reinforcement from the parent like the golden child is, letting the parent make all of the decisions for them just like the golden child does, and so on.
But this requires that the scapegoat see the golden child like the parent does. But often they don't see the golden child in anything close to the idealized way that the parent sees.
Again narcissists indulge in behaviors where the role of the child is way more important than who the child is, and what the child really thinks and feels, so how the parent perceives the golden child can be drastically different than how a scapegoat experiences the same golden child.
If the scapegoat experiences the golden child as menacing, duplicitous, disgustingly sycophantic, and/or contemptuous, then it won't work, and rarely does a parent care to know how one child is experiencing another one of their children. The only thing that matters to them is whether their child is acting more like the golden child.
So, let us say that no progress is being made. The scapegoat child isn't turning themselves inside out to mimic the golden child. It is the more common outcome. The scapegoat wants to be loved for themselves, not make themselves into someone else.
This is not to say that there aren't any scapegoat children who mimic, but they aren't common. In fact, I have a post started on this subject, and most of the time if there is mimicking by a scapegoat, it's because the golden child is exceptionally talented, high-achieving or paraded around by the parent in beauty pageants. This kind of golden child isn't bullying or menacing either for a scapegoat to want to "be them". This presents a host of other kinds of issues that narcissists don't consider and won't be happy with, but for the meantime, I will leave that discussion to that other post.
Anyway, since most narcissistic parents can't seem to make their scapegoat turn themselves inside out to be "just like the golden child", narcissists will always choose the punishing route when their manipulations do not work.
So the punishing route is to try to brainwash the scapegoat into thinking that they, the scapegoat, has all kinds of negative qualities. In other words the parent tries to separate them: the golden child is all that is good, and has all of the qualities that are required by the parent, and the scapegoat is all bad (and crazy too, as all scapegoats are called crazy even when they aren't).
This can be a day in and day out experience for the scapegoat.
"Oh, here we go again! Your drawings are terrible. Look at your brother's! You shouldn't even try."
"You're so sure of yourself! Your sister is a lot more humble. Why aren't you?"
"Another B! Don't show me that when you are just as capable as your sister of getting an A."
"I always knew you were more stupid than your brother."
"You don't stand a chance. Your brother is way ahead of you now because you didn't try hard enough."
"You'll never be a 'great anything'. In fact, I'll put my money on it that your brother is way more successful in life than you. You're too flawed and disappointing to be great."
It's ground into them constantly, all of these comparisons and negative judgements. I have listed a lot of the negative comments that scapegoats receive from their narcissistic parents HERE.
In a lot of religions, there are clauses to "not judge." A lot of religions were about keeping people in the faith, keeping children in their families, stabilizing society. Judgements tear people apart because they are, in effect, contempt. And of all the four horseman of the Apocalypse (the deciding factor of which relationships will fall apart), contempt will assure that the relationship will not survive.
When you are deemed to be so "flawed" that it is the only thing a parent sees about you, and a scapegoat takes those judgements seriously, they can and do commit suicide over it. In fact, suicidal thoughts are more likely than turning themselves inside out to be exactly like the golden child, a golden child they may not want to be anything like.
And believe it or not, for the sickest narcissists, suicides are another source of narcissistic supply with more false narratives.
The other alternative to suicide is the same route I've discussed before: the scapegoat stops caring about whether their parent approves of them or not. The parent's false narratives will assure the scapegoat won't care, and listening to how they are so flawed won't work either if there are false narratives. Plus the contempt will assure a "gone scapegoat" and a "broken damaged relationship."
The other thing that narcissistic parents do is, as I've said before, is to try to brainwash their scapegoats that they are crazy and can't understand reality and that they need to follow the constant directions, advice and commands of the parent so that they don't make mistakes. The ultimate reason a parent would do this is to have complete control over the child at all times: what the child does, what they say, who they talk to, what they talk about - the narcissistic parent wants to control all of it. Trying to isolate the child from other familial relationships is all part of the agenda, as well as smear campaigns about the scapegoat's mental health behind that child's back. So a lot of betrayal is part of gaslighting a child.
Assuming the child gets brainwashed to think they are so crazy that they have no free will, it will damage a child's ability to form a free will, to ward off other predators and narcissists, as well as create the idea that they cannot survive in the world because they are crazy. I go into the issues of gaslighting a child in this post (under the gaslighting category towards the bottom of the page).
I'm not sure this is all manipulation either since all narcissists do this to their scapegoat child (it is just one of those weird anomalies that all narcissists with Narcissistic Personality Disorder share). Scapegoats can show symptoms of trauma, and that can be interpreted as "My child is crazy" by a narcissist.
But there is something consciously evil and intentional about gaslighting too, because it sounds less concerning and more contemptuous when narcissists are trying to brainwash in this way. They also tend to be abusive of children they deem as being crazy. Also because they are so addicted to power, control and domination, gaslighting provides an instant, easy and fast route to get to a place of absolute dominance and hidden abuse.
In terms of favoritism, scapegoats are often compared negatively to the golden child in terms of sanity, in terms of mental acuity, in terms of factual acuity, in terms of mental stamina, in terms of intelligence, and in terms of school grades (falling school grades are often influenced by the trauma of scapegoats).
If a scapegoat believes all of this, they know they will never get the positive treatment that the golden child gets because narcissists are typically prejudiced of people with mental illnesses, mental handicaps, children with falling grades, and they like to give their scapegoat children diagnoses and reasons why they are rejectable and a laughing stock because of their minds.
It takes only one parent or adult to get a scapegoat child to question why a parent is doing this.
Sometimes it's because a parent does not want to continue to parent their scapegoat child. They want an excuse to either abandon parenting or use neglectful parenting, and trying to promote the idea that their child is insane makes it a lot easier to do so.
Telling everyone that their golden child is absolutely sane keeps their reputation intact because they aren't saying that about all of their children.
Whether the child gets brainwashed into thinking of themselves as insane is, again, dependent on a lot of factors. If they aren't called crazy in any other part of their life and relationships, then they feel simply betrayed and unloved instead. If their parent is using it with a lot of false narratives, then it isn't effective either. If the golden child is not a picture of sanity to the scapegoat, that will, again, mitigate the effectiveness of calling the scapegoat crazy compared to the golden child. With enough lies and false narratives by the parent and the golden child, children who are called crazy can either dissociate during those periods, or simply not trust what the parent has to say.
Being blamed for things they didn't do (gaslighting a child to think they do things they aren't aware of) will also mean the child won't respect what the parent has to say about them.
Many scapegoats don't realize the extent of the gaslighting until they spend most of their time with another adult, or when they go "no contact", or when they are bringing up their own child.
There is no reason to call a child crazy, even if it may be true, or especially when it is not true.
A lot of narcissists like to use it as a form of prejudice and to silence their scapegoats. And they use it to compare them negatively to the golden child.
Psychologists think that gaslighting is the most egregious kind of abuse that narcissists do to their scapegoat children. It certainly is the most evil, but it's the kind of abuse that tends to work slowly and insidiously on a child and can be mitigated by other adults who are not convinced the child is insane, so I would still say that the Jekyll/Hyde behaviors of narcissists seem more immediately egregious and dangerous (in other words, trauma symptoms are immediate and noticeable, as well as their own responses, namely flight responses).
* As a Baiting Technique to Keep Children in Role (the Golden Child as Supporter of Parent, and the Scapegoat as the One to Carry the Family Member's Own Bad Traits and Motivations):
You can see this in politics today where the leaders of a party accuse a number of politicians in the opposing party for the traits and activities of themselves.
Blame shifting and projection has always been a part of the enormous amounts of political blaming, shaming, shifting blame, hypocrisy and hatred. In fact, blame shifting and projection are seen as useful to staying in power. If something goes wrong, blame the past opposing party's administrations. It is all part of the "political game" as well as part of "political theater".
I'm often surprised that it works, at least in the short term, until it becomes an obnoxious pattern that hardly anyone likes.
If you were to try to insist on co-operation, peace between the parties, reasonable government policies, projects, actions and discourse which takes the needs of all citizens into consideration, you'd probably be a scapegoat. It's like everything one party does has to be opposed in a huge way by the opposite party. It's like the unspoken rule is that the rift has to widen, not narrow.
Granted there are drastically opposing views in the country, people who want very little government, an incredibly small tax burden, and a simple dictatorship with few, if any, government workers, and people who want big government, lots of safety nets, a compassionate government that helps those in need, and even more democratic solutions that aren't just decided by an oligarch of wealthy political donors.
Trying to close the rift can set you up to be a scapegoat of one or both of them. Both will insist that you choose sides.
Because they find both "not choosing a side" and "choosing a side that is not enough on 'their side'", they will often "bait" you to make sure you stay in a scapegoat role until you choose to be a loyalist (a sycophant with all of the "talking points" of the political party).
In terms of the family, the same can be applied. If your parents are in continual opposition and they hate each other as vehemently as the two American parties do, what you say to close the gap won't be appreciated.
This is why scapegoats often do not want any part of competitions inside the family (between their parents or between their siblings). They are burdened enough by being thrust into the scapegoat role to begin with, and they know they are going to lose no matter which side they choose, or which side they try to entreat to be fair and open-minded, or even just to explain something so that one parent understands the other parent better, or the siblings understand that there is an "opposition game" going on that one or both parents set up. It's the Karpman's Triangle made manifest.
Usually when there is a Karpman's Triangle in family dynamics, it's a sign of toxicity. The more rigid the roles are in the triangle, the worse the toxicity is, especially for the scapegoat.
In terms of the triangle, scapegoats are often accused of being the persecutor (a lie, but it's only because someone wants them to choose sides). Often the push to choose sides puts the scapegoat in the role of mediator (the role of rescuer in the Karpman's triangle), ending up being the victim because the push to compromise and be reasonable is not accepted.
Narcissistic parents thrive on opposition, conflict, rifts, chaos and blame shifting (each of these tactics has their own link, by the way). This means they have a vested interest in not resolving conflicts, in not mediating, in not being reasonable and open to different perspectives. Their main agenda is power, control and domination and a narcissistic parent is going to look at mediation and resolving conflicts as "giving up power". It's also narcissistic supply for them, as again, negative narcissistic supply will do.
For the rest of the family, however, it is crazy-making and traumatic.
It's why a lot of narcissists are stuck with other narcissists and sometimes even psychopaths in old age because most people do not want to be part of a family of ongoing conflicts and chaos, least of all, scapegoats.
The end result if everyone stays is that the conflicts stay and widen into all kinds of other issues, usually between the parents and all of the siblings, and why the Karpman's Triangle is always part of family dynamics. As long as narcissists are in the family, the toxic triangle stays.
Since narcissists thrive on rifts, conflicts and blame shifting, it stands to reason that they are going to bait someone to keep the rifts, conflicts and blame shifting alive.
For narcissists, they engage in new conflicts with their scapegoats as a way to keep the scapegoats engaged, defending themselves, explaining themselves, and taking insults personally. Until a scapegoat learns the DEEP method or realize that these conflicts are being used for the narcissistic supply of their parent, the scapegoat, they will usually engage "in the game" until they, the scapegoat, no longer wants a life riddled with constant arguments and baiting by their narcissistic parent.
Which is to say that narcissists will always create new conflicts for the scapegoat to face if the old ones are not serving them, the parent. So what do narcissists do to keep the conflicts and the scapegoat's defenses and explanations going?
Bait the scapegoat. Any reaction to anything the narcissist can dig up, even false narratives will do because they are still "narcissistic supply" even if they are negative sources of it.
This is just one reason abuse escalates. More conflicts are necessary because more narcissistic supply is necessary in terms of the narcissist's way of thinking.
Most baiting and hoovers with betrayals usually target the scapegoat of a narcissistic family. "What will upset my scapegoat the most? Why, I think showing blatant favoritism will upset him (or her) the most! In fact, I'll deprive them of almost everything, feed them all of the foods they hate, not give them attention or presents, send them to their room all of the time, while lavishing my golden child with all of the foods he (or she) loves, keeping them at the dinner table, lavishing most of my attention on them, and barely notice they exist! That'll teach my scapegoat to give me more positive narcissistic supply! But I'll take them being upset if they can't see me as the best parent that ever lived!" - I'm not sure it is as conscious as this because there is a lot of black and white thinking that goes into scapegoating, so it may not be as manipulative as it sounds, but there is certainly some manipulation to it in this way.
And by the way, how is a scapegoat supposed to give them more positive narcissistic supply when they are treated like this? It's a type of narcissistic reasoning that seems particularly flawed and out of touch with real human behavior. No one who is sane is going to give positive narcissistic supply to someone who punishes and starves them out in this way; even narcissists wouldn't do it.
* As an Expression of Hatred and Prejudice:
There is some research that suggests narcissists are more prejudiced than other kinds of people.
Having a scapegoat is a kind of prejudice.
Whether scapegoating one child or a whole group, the type of actions prejudiced folks take is similar. Narcissists take similar approaches in how they treat people from one narcissist to another.
Societal scapegoats are hated; family scapegoats are hated. There is a call to remove societal scapegoats; there is a call to shun a family scapegoat. Narcissists need societal scapegoats to divide and conquer and get more power; narcissists need a family scapegoat for the same reason. Narcissists can't take blame themselves, so when they are blamed, they deflect and have scapegoats to put the blame on instead, whether they be societal scapegoats or family scapegoats.
Narcissists also tend to go along with a crowd in terms of who to hate. If they are surrounded by Democrats they will hate most Republicans. If they are Republican narcissists they will "go with the flow" with the latest prejudice - at the present time, Latinos, and especially Mexicans and undocumented workers, and in the past they may have hated African Americans.
If they grew up in a family that rejected and disparaged women of a younger generation, they tend to go with the flow and reject and disparage women of a younger generation themselves.
Narcissists don't put much thought into who to hate. They simply hate people who are popular to hate in their given circle, or who don't go along with what they want. They look at others as either loyal to them or disloyal to them (loyal meaning "willing to be mind-controlled") without taking a second look into how disloyal they are all the way around. Narcissists aren't committed to people, to promises or much of anything or anyone.
In terms of favoritism, societal prejudice would look like "only whites in our organization". In terms of familial prejudice, "only men in the family", or "only people I favoritize", or "only people who are willing to be my sycophants."
Most people find prejudice to be disgusting and morally objectionable, and narcissists generally know this. So they try to hide their prejudices and hatreds except with people who have the same views. Many of them sound like narcissistic politicians who like to disparage and insult other politicians from another political party.
There isn't much difference when it comes to how they talk about their own family members, including their children from how they talk about a political party or leader they oppose.
Familial prejudices are even more morally objectionable to most other people, so many narcissists make up stories or conspiracy theories to justify their hatred and rejection of their own children or anyone else in their family they don't like. Narcissists tend to be intolerant of a lot of people.
Positivity about other people is not one of their strong suits.
Prejudice can be dangerous when you are the target, particularly when there is favoritism of people who are abusive and threatening towards you, and conspiracy theories (perspecticide) are involved.
* As an Expression of Conspiratorial Thinking Patterns:
Conspiratorial thinking often involves getting to the truth of a matter, but when the conspirator isn't satisfied with the truth, it adds to making more conspiracies.
According to Todd Grande, a psychologist, this is most often the case.
This means that conspiracy theorists generally have a limited capacity for the truth, and a high capacity for confirmation bias.
When I asked Google search and Google AI "Do conspiracy theorists have a strong capacity for confirmation bias?" the answer was yes, with a lot of explanations as to why they do.
But what is the psychology of conspiracy theorists?
I found this article by Psychology Today on the subject. The key points in the article were these:
* Conspiracy theories thrive on cognitive biases, mental shortcuts that allow us to make sense of the world.
* "Proportionality bias," leads people to believe that significant events must have substantial causes.
* In an environment with high mistrust in authorities, conspiracy theories can flourish.
In terms of narcissists, they tend to be more conspiratorial than others.
While there is not a direct link towards conspiratorial thinking in psychopaths, some research suggests a positive correlation between certain aspects of psychopathy and belief in conspiracy theories. - quote taken from the linked article.
So seeing that favoritism is both a narcissistic trait and can also be a dark triad trait for which narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism are part of the Dark Triad personality disorder, it stands to reason that the main perpetrators of the kind of favoritism that is abusive and scapegoating are going to come mainly from these two Cluster B Personality Disorders. Plus they are both likely to be conspiracy theorists with confirmation biases.
The combination of ingredients here, the conspiracy-type thinking patterns, with personality disorders, and confirmation bias, can also inspire violence and extremist views, making the combination of scapegoating, favoritism and rigid beliefs dangerous for a child, at least in terms of escalating abuse and violence.
Again, prejudice also plays a role in who is a scapegoat, and familial prejudices play the biggest role, whether that is sexism, cultural differences, political differences, religious differences or racial differences. Who in the wider family is being abandoned, abused, not spoken to, talked about in derisive ways, is being referred to as having either mental health problems or problems with the law (with no facts to substantiate such claims), and what do they all have in common? That will probably lead you to where the family prejudices lie and to who is scapegoated and why they are scapegoated. Are they the young women in the family? Are they the artists in the family? Are they politically the most left-leaning members? Are they the most disabled members? Are they LGBTQ+ or in an inter-racial marriage? Are they wary of authoritarianism? Are they the most independent minded members, members who don't stick with a party line, but who explore different perspectives and statistics (intellectual prejudice)? - all of these are the most common scapegoats in narcissistic families in present times, however it can be almost anything the greater family has decided to fear, hate and reject.
When we take prejudice, confirmation bias, a penchant to manipulate with black and white thinking about other people, meaning they see people in terms of "all good" and "all bad", the fact that narcissists and psychopaths lie and manipulate a lot to get their own way and literally live in a fantasy world because of that alone, it stands to reason that this would all influence conspiratorial thinking. It also explains why scapegoats can never get out of role without going "no contact" with their families of origin. Being stuck in a scapegoat role for the first 18 years of life is enough for one lifetime. Very few people can tolerate being a scapegoat for much longer than that without heavy consequences to their mental and physical health, the other relationships they are in, and as I've said, it can get dangerous, especially with siblings who are trying to "go along to get along" with an abusive parent.
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