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Narcissists Are People Dealing With Insecurities

by Anjanee Sharma on Mar 26 2021 4:18 PM

New study finds that narcissism is driven by insecurity.

Narcissists Are People Dealing With Insecurities
Team of psychological researchers reveal that narcissism is driven by insecurity, and not a grandiose sense of self.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is characterized by excessive self-love and consists of two subtypes - grandiose and vulnerable narcissism.

Pascal Wallisch, senior author, said, "For a long time, it was unclear why narcissists engage in unpleasant behaviors, such as self-congratulation, as it actually makes others think less of them. This has become quite prevalent in the age of social media--a behavior that's been coined as flexing.”

Mary Kowalchyk, lead author, said, "More specifically, the results suggest that narcissism is better understood as a compensatory adaptation to overcome and cover up low self-worth."

She explains that narcissists cope with their insecurities by flexing, which makes others like them less in the long run, further aggravating their insecurities and leading to a vicious cycle of flexing behaviors.

The study had almost 300 participants, 60% female and 40% male, with an average age of 20.

Psychopathy is also characterized by a grandiose sense of self, so the researchers aimed to understand how these conditions relate.

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The research team designed PRISN (Performative Refinement to soothe Insecurities about SophisticatioN), a new tool, which produced FLEX (perFormative seLf-Elevation indeX). FLEX captures insecurity-driven self-conceptualizations that are manifested as impression management, leading to self-elevating tendencies.

The PRISN scale includes commonly used measures to assess social desirability, self-esteem, and psychopathy. FLEX has four components - impression management, the need for social validation, self-elevation, and social dominance.

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Findings revealed high correlations between FLEX and narcissism, but not with psychopathy. The need for social validation correlated with the reported tendency to engage in performative self-elevation (a characteristic of vulnerable narcissism). Whereas measures of psychopathy, such as elevated levels of self-esteem, showed low correlation levels with vulnerable narcissism, implying a lack of insecurity.

The results suggest that genuine narcissists are insecure and are best described by the vulnerable narcissism subtype. However, grandiose narcissism might be better understood as a manifestation of psychopathy.



Source-Eurekalert


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