Five studies established that normal narcissism is correlated with good psychological health. Specifically, narcissism is (a) inversely related to daily sadness and dispositional depression, (b) inversely related to daily and dispositional loneliness, (c) positively related to daily and dispositional subjective well-being as well as couple well-being, (d) inversely related to daily anxiety, and (e) inversely related to dispositional neuroticism. More important, self-esteem fully accounted for the relation between narcissism and psychological health. Thus, narcissism is beneficial for psychological health only insofar as it is associated with high self-esteem. Explanations of the main and mediational findings in terms of response or social desirability biases (e.g., defensiveness, repression, impression management) were ruled out. Supplementary analysis showed that the links among narcissism, self-esteem, and psychological health were preponderantly linear.

Two experiments compared the social orientations of people with high and low self-esteem (HSEs vs. LSEs). In Experiment 1, participants received positive or negative interpersonal feedback from an accepting or rejecting evaluator. HSEs chose to interact with a rejecting evaluator more often than LSEs did. In Experiment 2, participants received solely negative interpersonal feedback from an accepting or rejecting evaluator of high or low social status. This time, both HSEs and LSEs chose an accepting/high-status evaluator over a rejecting/low-status one, but only HSEs chose a rejecting/ high-status evaluator over an accepting/low-status one. Implications are discussed.