Narcissism and psychological needs for social status, power, and belonging

Abstract

We examined the associations that narcissistic personality traits had with psychological needs for social status, power, and belonging. Across three studies (N = 488/1113/704), extraverted narcissism, antagonistic narcissism, neurotic narcissism, and communal narcissism were positively associated with the need for social status, but they diverged in their associations with the other psychological needs. Neurotic narcissism differed the most from the other aspects of narcissism because it was negatively associated with the need for power and had a very large positive association with the need to belong. In contrast, the other narcissistic personality traits were positively associated with the need for power and had either a very small positive association with the need to belong (extraverted narcissism) or were not associated with this need at all (antagonistic narcissism and communal narcissism). Taken together, these results suggest both similarities and differences with regard to the psychological needs that characterize these narcissistic personality traits. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding what narcissistic individuals want from their social interactions with others.