Abstract
Narcissism has been widely discussed in the context of career success and leadership. Besides several adaptive traits, narcissism has been characterized by difficulties in emotion regulation. However, despite its essential role in mental health, there is little research on emotion regulation processes in narcissism. Specifically, the investigation of not only the habitual use of specific regulation strategies but also the actual ability to regulate is needed due to diverging implications for treatment approaches. Thereby it is important to differentiate between vulnerable and grandiose narcissism as these two phenotypes might be related differently to regulation deficits. The aim of this study was to examine the association between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and emotion regulation in healthy individuals (30f/30m) focusing on the strategy reappraisal. Additionally, potential sex effects have been explored. Narcissism was assessed using self-report measures and emotion regulation with self-report questionnaires as well as an experimental regulation task. During this task, participants were presented with pictures of sad/happy faces with the instruction to indicate their subjective emotions via button press. Depending on the condition, participants either indicated their natural response or applied cognitive control strategies to regulate their own subjective emotions. Results indicate no relationship between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and emotion regulation ability, irrespective of sex. Individuals high on vulnerable narcissism use the maladaptive regulation strategy suppression more frequently than individuals with low expressions. Individuals high on grandiose narcissism, in contrast, seem to avoid the suppression of positive emotions and do not express negative emotions in an uncontrolled manner. Interestingly, while grandiose narcissism was not associated with depressive symptoms, vulnerable narcissism correlated positively with depressive symptoms and anhedonia. Findings of this study underline the need to differentiate between grandiose and vulnerable manifestations of narcissism. Against our expectation, narcissism was not related to emotion regulation performance. In line with previous research, grandiose narcissism seems less harmful for mental health, while vulnerable narcissism is associated with psychological problems and the use of rather maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, i.e., suppression. Future research should investigate the relationship between pathological narcissism and emotion regulation also by extending the scope to other relevant regulation strategies.
Highlights
The concept of narcissism has gained increasing attention, for instance, in the context of leadership, and has been linked to positive factors such as high achievement, innovation, and charisma as well as to negative factors such as lack of concern for others, risk to company’s reputation, and arrogance
Findings revealed a stronger expression of grandiose narcissism in men compared to women (NPI-15 subscale Leadership/Authority and Grandiose Exhibitionism; see Table 1)
The following sections describe the association between narcissism and habitual emotion regulation, emotion regulation ability, and depression symptoms
Summary
The concept of narcissism has gained increasing attention, for instance, in the context of leadership, and has been linked to positive factors such as high achievement, innovation, and charisma as well as to negative factors such as lack of concern for others, risk to company’s reputation (e.g., fraud), and arrogance (for review see Grijalva et al, 2015; Fatfouta, 2019). Individuals high in grandiose narcissism tend to seek and satisfy self-aggrandizing and rewarding goals They use self-regulatory styles focusing on self-enhancement rather than on costs, which is manifested in assertive, arrogant and exhibitionist social behavior (Krizan and Herlache, 2018). Individuals high in vulnerable narcissism, in contrast, tend to detect and combat threats to the self-image (i.e., fight-flight responses) They use self-regulatory styles which excessively focus on self-protection revealed through dismissive, shy, but volatile social behavior (Krizan and Herlache, 2018). Vulnerable narcissism has been even linked to homicidal ideation, parasuicidal behavior, and suicide attempts (for review see Pincus and Lukowitsky, 2010) which underlines the importance to differentiate between grandiose and vulnerable themes in research and clinical care
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