Empirical studies

Within psychology, there are two main branches of research into narcissism, clinical and social psychology. These approaches differ in their view of narcissism with the former treating it a disorder, and thus as discrete, and the latter treating it as a personality trait, and thus as a continuum. These two strands of research tend loosely to stand in a divergent relation to one another although they converge in places.

Campbell and Foster (2007) ^[1] review the literature on narcissism. They argue that narcissists possess the following ‘basic ingredients’:

• Positive. Narcissists think they are better than others. ^[2]

• Inflated. Narcissists’ views tend to be contrary to reality. In measure which compare self-report to objective measures, narcissists self-views tend to be greatly exaggerated. ^[3]

• Agentic. Narcissists’ views tend to be most exaggerated in the agentic domain, relative to the communion domain. ^{[2] [3]}

• Special. Narcissists perceive themselves to be unique and special people ^[4].

• Selfish. Research upon narcissists’ behaviour in resource dilemmas supports the case for narcissists as being selfish ^[5].

• Oriented toward success. Narcissists are oriented towards success by being, for example, approach oriented ^[6]

Also, narcissists tend to demonstrate a lack of interest in warm and caring interpersonal relationships.

Campbell and Forster (2007) ^[1] also talk of several ongoing controversies within narcissism literature, namely whether narcissism is healthy or unhealthy, a personality disorder, a discrete or continuous variable, defensive or offensive, the same across genders, the same across cultures, and changeable or unchangeable.

Campbell and Foster (2007) argue that self-regulatory strategies are of paramount importance to understanding narcissism. ^[1]. Self-regulation in narcissists involves such things as striving to make one’s self look, feel positive, special, successful and important. It comes in both intra-psychic, such a blaming a situation rather than self for failure, and interpersonal forms, such as using a relationship to serve one’s own self. There are many competing models of the narcissistic self which try to explain all the phenomena relating to narcissism. However, there is no definitive ‘truth’ at the present. Some differences in self-regulation between narcissists and non-narcissists can be seen with Campbell, Reeder, Sedikides & Elliot (2000) ^[7] who conducted a study in which two experiments were conducted. In both experiments, participants took part an achievement task following which they were provided with false feedback; it was either bogus success or failure. It was found that both narcissists and non-narcissists self-enhanced but non-narcissists showed more flexibility in doing so. Participants were measured on both a comparative and a non-comparative self-enhancement strategy. It was found that both narcissists and non-narcissists employed the non-comparative strategy similarly. However, narcissists were found to be more self-serving with the comparative strategy, employing it far more, than non-narcissists, suggesting a greater rigidity with their self-enhancement. When narcissists receive negative feedback which threatens the self, they will self-enhance at all costs whereas non-narcissists tend to have limits.

Sedikides, Rudich, Kumashiro, and Rusbult (2007) argued on one side of the healthy vs unhealthy debate within narcissism, narcissism is associated with decreased dispositional depression and daily sadness, decreased daily and dispositional loneliness, increased dispositional well-being and couple well-being, decreased daily anxiety, and decreased dispositional neuroticism. High self-esteem accounts for the benefits of narcissism to one’s general well-being. ^[8] It has also been found that there is a difference between the domain from which narcissists derive their self-esteem; narcissists derive their self-esteem from positive agentic self-views whereas non-narcissists derive self-esteem from positive agentic and communion self-views. <ref name=nextone>Campbell, W.K., Rudich, E.A., Sedikides, C. (2002). Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and the Positivity of Self-Views: Two Portraits of Self-Love. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 358-368.