It's Not That Great Anymore: The Central Role of Defense Mechanisms in Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism

Abstract

Objectives: The concept of narcissism contains a yet unresolved paradox: Its grandiose facet depicts the psychopathological core but is often associated with life-satisfaction and overall functioning, whereas its vulnerable facet is associated with psychological distress, but still not included in the international classification systems. Our goal was to investigate the relationship between the two facets of narcissism expecting underlying defense mechanisms to be core elements. First, we aimed to identify defense mechanisms specific to grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Second, we explored how both facets are differentially associated with psychological distress, assuming that grandiose narcissism would be associated with less psychological distress than vulnerable narcissism. Third, we investigated the mediating role of defense mechanisms between narcissism and psychological distress.Methods: In a non-clinical sample of N = 254 individuals, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory was used for the assessment of grandiose and vulnerable facets of narcissism, the Defense Style Questionnaire for defense mechanisms, and the Brief Symptom Inventory for psychological distress. Structural equation modeling was employed to identify distinct factors of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Associations between specific defense mechanisms and both facets were calculated. Furthermore, the direct association between both facets and psychological distress was examined. We finally explored whether defense mechanisms mediate the association between distress and both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism.Results: A distinct pattern of defense mechanisms for each facet of narcissism could be extracted: Both facets showed significant positive correlations with specific intermediate and all maladaptive defense mechanisms. Only grandiose narcissism showed significant positive correlations with adaptive defenses. Vulnerable narcissism showed negative correlations with all adaptive defenses. Specifically, grandiose narcissism was significantly related to anticipation, pseudo-altruism, rationalization, and dissociation, whereas vulnerable narcissism was negatively related to all these defense mechanisms. While grandiose narcissism was not related to psychological distress, vulnerable narcissism showed high correlations with psychological distress. Intriguingly, mediator analysis found that grandiose narcissism was related to psychological distress when mediated by maladaptive defense mechanisms.Discussion: The role of defense mechanisms is central for a differentiated understanding of the two different faces of narcissism. The relevance of assessing defense mechanisms in clinical settings, and related empirical findings are discussed.

Validation of the German Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory and construction of a brief form using Ant Colony Optimization

“…Crossed-out items were removed because of a high overlap with the other listed item: Exhibitionism FFNI005 FFNI140; Grandiose Fantasy FFNI037 FFNI067; Indifference FFNI078 FFNI123; Lack of Empathy FFNI116 FFNI146; Manipulativeness FFNI053 FFNI098; Reactive Anger FFNI046 FFNI106 8 FFNI060 FFNI064 9 For comparability, we evaluated two-and three-factor models (though the optimization was based on the three-factor model) and used Maximum Likelihood estimation, as in Study 1. 10 See Kampe et al (2021) for a recent and fine-grained analysis of defense styles in narcissism.…”

Preliminary findings on the associations between defense mechanisms and implicit versus explicit negative affect.

“…Following Vaillant (1971) hierarchical approach, we used the German version of the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-40; Schauenburg et al, 2007). The hierarchical assignment of defense mechanisms to respective scales of adaptiveness was in line with recent work (see Kampe et al, 2021, for a detailed assignment description; but also see Schauenburg et al, 2007, for a different approach). We also assessed emotion regulation difficulties and coping strategies deriving from explicit models of affect regulation.…”

“…adaptive, intermediate, and maladaptive defense mechanisms (for the allocation of the items see also Kampe et al, 2021). Cronbach's α in the present study was α = .64 for the adaptive defense mechanisms, α = .57 for the intermediate defense mechanisms and α = .88 for the maladaptive defense mechanisms.…”

Approximating defense mechanisms in a national study of adults: prevalence and correlates with functioning

“…Treatment studies have also demonstrated the change characteristics of defenses in relationship to clinical outcome variables. Despite their clinical importance and privileged position in psychodynamic models of psychopathology [5] and development, to our knowledge, no published study has investigated defense mechanisms in a large, general population sample.…”