Climbing up or falling down: Narcissism predicts physiological sensitivity to social status in children and their parents

Grapsas, Stathis; Denissen, Jaap J. A.; Lee, Hae Yeon; Bos, Peter A.; Brummelman, Eddie

doi:10.1111/desc.13062

Cited by 14 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…We propose that researchers should shift the focus from what narcissists generally feel to what determines how narcissists feel in any particular moment. This dovetails with dynamic models of narcissism (Back, 2018; Grapsas, Denissen, et al, 2020; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001) and personality (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Geukes, van Zalk, et al, 2017; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Morf, 2006; Wrzus & Roberts, 2017), which suggest that trait-like tendencies reflect frequently recurring states that emerge in person–environment transactions. For example, a recurring sense of having power might generate recurring states of increased pleasure in narcissists, which in turn might come across as an average tendency to experience positive affect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…On average, narcissists tend to experience positive emotions (see Czarna et al, 2018 for a review), yet findings show that they also experience emotional turmoil. Prior work has revealed, for example, that narcissists tend to show increased stress when under social evaluation (Brummelman, Nikolić, et al, 2018; Grapsas, Denissen, et al, 2020; Reinhard et al, 2012); are prone to experiencing shame, anger, and aggression in the face of failure (Denissen et al, 2018; Kjærvik & Bushman, 2021; Thomaes, Bushman, et al, 2008—but see Kirkpatrick et al, 2002); and show bouts of vulnerability (Edershile & Wright, 2020) and fluctuations in self-esteem based on the power they have in their daily lives (Geukes, Nestler, et al, 2017; Zeigler-Hill, Vrabel, et al, 2018). Our findings suggest that narcissists’ affect might oscillate depending on which of their social motives becomes satisfied or frustrated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Affective contingencies of narcissism.

Grapsas¹,

Brummelman²,

Dufner³

et al. 2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Several theories propose that narcissism is rooted in affective contingencies. Given narcissists’ focus on power, these contingencies should be strong in the power domain but not in the affiliation domain. We systematically investigated narcissists’ contingencies and explored whether these contingencies might link narcissism to social behavior. In a multimethod longitudinal study, we assessed unidimensional narcissism levels as well as two main narcissistic strategies: Admiration and rivalry. We measured 209 participants’ affective contingencies (i.e., affective responses to satisfying and frustrating experiences of power and affiliation) via self-reports (n = 207) and facial electromyography (fEMG, n = 201). In a 1-year follow-up, we observed participants’ power- and affiliation-related behaviors in the laboratory (valid n = 123). Results indicated that narcissism was linked to increased affective reactivity to power, and this pattern was present for both admiration and rivalry. Narcissism was unrelated to affective reactivity to affiliation, with an important exception: Individuals with higher levels of narcissistic rivalry exhibited decreased reactivity toward satisfactions and increased reactivity toward frustrations of affiliation. Results were more robust for self-reported than for fEMG-indexed reactivity. Although overall narcissism and narcissistic admiration were related to power-related behaviors 1 year later, affective contingencies did not generally account for these links. These findings inform why narcissists have a relatively strong power motive and why some narcissists high in rivalry have a relatively weak affiliation motive. More broadly, these findings provide insight into the affective contingencies underlying personality traits and call for research on the contexts in which these contingencies guide behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective contingencies of narcissism.

Grapsas¹,

Brummelman²,

Dufner³

et al. 2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The author interprets this pattern of results as a more shallow processing in relation to biased attributions, but a greater responsiveness to evaluative information. Considered together with the studies reviewed above, this may be seen as supporting the picture of grandiose-narcissistic individuals displaying overly confident, hyporeactive responses when it comes to decision-making (Yang, Sedikides, Gu, Luo, Wang, & Cai, 2018) and attribution of success (Krusemark, 2009), alongside increased responsiveness to potentially self-relevant information (Grapsas et al, 2020;Krusemark, 2009).…”

Section: Studies Targeting Intrapersonal Functionsmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…Neurophysiological research on social exclusion in narcissism thus reveals involuntary stress reactions that might either not be reported, or also not be accessible to the narcissistic individuals themselves. Stronger physiological responses in response to social status threats can already be observed in children (Grapsas et al, 2020). Importantly, these reactions are not without social consequences, as report that those who are habitually high in grandiose narcissism and experience social rejection, as indicated by dACC activity, also display aggressive behavior toward others, as predicted by the threatened egotism model (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).…”

Section: Intrapersonal Functions In Narcissismmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…One study, however, did not find such an effect using RSA (Zhang et al, 2015). Of note, grandiose narcissism amplifies negative affective responses in face of ego threat even in children (Grapsas et al, 2020). While this research points to increased stress responses for individuals higher in narcissism in situations that are supposed to be threatening for most of us, further research shows that even stimuli that are not intrinsically threatening induce similar responses: Jauk, Benedek, and colleagues (2017) had extreme groups of individuals either high or low in grandiose narcissism perform a visual self-viewing paradigm during fMRI.…”

Section: Studies Targeting Intrapersonal Functionsmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Can neuroscience help to understand narcissism? A systematic review of an emerging field

Jauk

Kanske

2021

Personality Neuroscience

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Narcissism is a Janusian personality construct, associated with both grandiose self-assuredness and dominance, as well as vulnerable insecurity and reactivity. Central questions of intra- and interpersonal functioning in narcissism are still a matter of debate. Neuroscience could help to understand the paradoxical patterns of experience and behavior beyond the limitations of self-reports. We provide a systematic review of 34 neuroscience studies on grandiose, vulnerable, pathological narcissism, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), spanning experimental investigations of intra- and interpersonal mechanisms, research on neurophysiological and neuroendocrine aspects of baseline function, and brain structural correlates. While neuroscience has scarcely directly studied vulnerable narcissism, grandiose narcissism is associated with heightened vigilance to ego threat and stress responses following ego threat, as well as heightened stress indicators in baseline measures. Such responses are not commonly observed in self-reports, highlighting the potential of neuroscience to augment our understanding of self-regulatory dynamics in narcissism. Interpersonal functioning is characterized by deficits in social–affective processes. Both involve altered activity within the salience network, pointing to a double dissociation regarding the expression of narcissism and self/other oriented situational focus. Findings are summarized in an integrative model providing testable hypotheses for future research along with methodological recommendations.

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Development of narcissism across the life span: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies.

Orth,

Krauss,

Back

2024

Psychological Bulletin

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This meta-analytic review investigated the development of narcissism across the life span, by synthesizing the available longitudinal data on mean-level change and rank-order stability. Three factors of narcissism were examined: agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism. Analyses were based on data from 51 samples, including 37,247 participants. As effect size measures, we used the standardized mean change d per year and test-retest correlations that were corrected for attenuation due to measurement error. The results suggested that narcissism typically decreases from age 8 to 77 years (i.e., the observed age range), with aggregated changes of d = −0.28 for agentic narcissism, d = −0.41 for antagonistic narcissism, and d = −0.55 for neurotic narcissism. Rank-order stability of narcissism was high, with average values of .73 (agentic), .68 (antagonistic), and .60 (neurotic), based on an average time lag of 11.42 years. Rank-order stability did not vary as a function of age. However, rank-order stability declined as a function of time lag, asymptotically approaching values of .62 (agentic), .52 (antagonistic), and .33 (neurotic) across long time lags. Moderator analyses indicated that the findings on mean-level change and rank-order stability held across gender and birth cohort. The meta-analytic data set included mostly Western and White/European samples, pointing to the need of conducting more research with non-Western and ethnically diverse samples. In sum, the findings suggest that agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism show normative declines across the life span and that individual differences in these factors are moderately (neurotic) to highly (agentic, antagonistic) stable over time. Public Significance StatementThis meta-analytic review suggests that people's level of narcissism typically declines across the life course. The aggregated changes from childhood to old age were of small to medium size. The results also indicated that the rank-order stability of narcissism is high, even across long periods, supporting the conclusion that narcissism should be considered a personality trait. The findings have important implications given that high levels of narcissism influence people's lives in many ways, both the lives of the narcissistic individuals themselves and, maybe even more, the lives of the people whom they encounter.

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Climbing up or falling down: Narcissism predicts physiological sensitivity to social status in children and their parents

Cited by 14 publications

References 51 publications

Affective contingencies of narcissism.

Affective contingencies of narcissism.

Can neuroscience help to understand narcissism? A systematic review of an emerging field

Development of narcissism across the life span: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies.

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