Narcissistic motivations to help during the COVID-19 quarantine

Abstract

We examined the extent to which trait narcissism was associated with helping behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that people higher in agentic grandiose narcissism would help during the COVID-19 quarantine for egoistic reasons and that communal grandiose narcissists would help because they care for the people in the community. Because vulnerable narcissists tend to self-protect, we expected them to be less helpful overall and report helping to either make themselves feel better or avoid social disapproval. We found supporting evidence such that agentic grandiose narcissists reported helping in a greater number of ways because they were motivated by self-promotion while communal narcissists helped in more ways because they were motivated by concern for others. Vulnerable narcissists reported doing less to help others and a lack of concern for others. Further, we found that the extent to which grandiose narcissists communicated more frequently about their various helping efforts was associated with increased state grandiose narcissism. These findings emphasize the self-focused nature of narcissistic personalities while highlighting unique differences between the narcissistic subtypes.