Everyone knows at least one. The person who turns every conversation back to himself, lists his own achievements and visibly bristles when attention shifts to somebody else. From the outside it looks like excess ego, arrogance, a sense of superiority. Psychology, however, says the picture is different: behind the one demanding loudest to be seen, there is often somebody who cannot confirm his own worth without help.

"When we talk about an egocentric personality, we usually mean somebody who always wants to be right, who needs to be the centre of attention, or who seems convinced he is above other people," explains Leticia Martín Enjuto, a psychologist and director of a psychology centre in Valencia. "But behind that stance, which can look arrogant or excessively self-assured to us, there may be a person who constantly needs others to confirm his worth. So what stands before us is not always somebody who feels superior, but somebody who needs to feel important, recognised or admired in order to feel all right." In practice it is a dependency on approval: all is well while the praise arrives, badly when it does not.

The decisive moment, the psychologist says, is not when the person gets attention but when they do not. A colleague receives the praise they had been waiting for. Somebody ignores them. Somebody contradicts them. "A person can appear very confident while receiving praise, attention or recognition, but feel deeply uncomfortable when somebody questions them, ignores them, or does not grant them the importance they expected. They may react defensively, get angry, belittle the other person, or try to prove they are right," she explains. The confidence that looked unshakeable collapses the moment the external confirmation disappears.

Picture a politician being laughed at for the first time at a press conference. Or a director who hears "no" in a meeting. The reaction that looks disproportionate from outside is, according to Martín Enjuto, usually the defence of an image the person has to maintain in order to feel safe. "Sometimes that constant need to prove oneself is precisely the sign that the self-esteem inside is more fragile than it looks." The frustration threshold is low: it is enough for somebody else to get more attention, or for another opinion to carry more weight in the group, and it is experienced as a threat.

This is not an excuse. The psychologist draws a clear line between understanding where behaviour comes from and setting boundaries against it: two different things, and both necessary. The same applies to empathy. When somebody constantly interrupts and minimises other people's problems, it is easy to conclude they "do not care about anyone". Sometimes that is true. But more often, she says, the person is so occupied with their own needs and with how others perceive them that they simply have no capacity for anyone else's emotions. Coldness is not always indifference.

The roots are often old. Some people learned early that they only get recognition if they stand out, deliver a result, keep proving they are special. There are the inverse cases too: a childhood of comparisons, a feeling of never being enough, so the need to be visible becomes compensation. "Behind it there may be a combination of learning, insecurity, a need for acceptance and self-esteem that depends too much on the way others look at you," Martín Enjuto concludes. Not everyone who likes talking about themselves has a problem. The difference is whether the need for recognition is occasional, or whether it already decides how they live and who they live with.