Narcissistic self-regulation in goal-oriented behavior

Narcissistic self-regulation in goal-directed behavior Nowadays, many people present themselves outwardly as superior, arrogant. It seems they think about themselves in an exaggerated way and in their minds they possess great power, intelligence, or a unique personality. Not only do they see themselves as superior and more important than others, but they also look down on people who they consider worse than themselves. Society increasingly appears to be crowded with such narcissistic individuals, who present themselves as perfect, all-knowing, most experienced, and beyond any need to continue developing. A question remains as to whether such an approach may not be a brake on social progress, especially when, despite being convinced of their own perfection, society still has a long way to go.

If humanity were to follow a saying attributed to Albert Einstein, in which he claims that no goal is so high as to justify dishonest methods, it is likely that social norms would not be violated for the sake of achieving goals. In the study presented here, we examine this issue more closely in relation to one of the basic so-called dark sides of personality—narcissism (Paulhus & William, 2002).

Narcissus, or Narcissus, is a term from Greek mythology, symbolizing the boy who gazed at his own reflection in a stream. The term narcissism begins to appear in professional literature in the 19th century, when Ellis defined it as the loss of sexual emotions due to an individual’s self-absorption (in Raskin & Terry, 1988).

The concept of narcissism was considered fundamental by Freud. His views on narcissism are based on his understanding of sexual libido (Freud, 1957). According to Freud, as Fromm (2000) notes, the fetus lives in a state of absolute narcissism. By being born, we take another step away from absolute self-sufficient narcissism toward perceiving the changing external world. It takes months before a child can perceive objects as such, as something that is “not me.” Original narcissism gradually develops through life into “object-love.” Even after a person has found external objects for his libido, human beings remain narcissistic to some degree.

A normal adult person is someone whose narcissism has been reduced to a socially acceptable minimum without disappearing entirely. Freud’s observation is confirmed by everyday experience. It appears that in most people one can find a narcissistic core that is inaccessible and that resists any attempt at full disruption (Fromm, 2000).

There are, however, also those who want to keep more than just a fraction of their libido and therefore forsake relationships with other people for their own benefit. Freud called this secondary narcissism. On the basis of these observations, Freud described psychosis as a return to absolute narcissism, when a person completely distances himself from external reality and the only reality is oneself—the self becomes completely filled with itself, becoming both self-god and world (Fromm, 2000).

Kohut (1971) argued that narcissistic development is independent of the development of the object of love. According to him, in their fantasies children see themselves as perfect beings. During healthy development, this conception is gradually worked through and the result is an objective view of the environment and of oneself. Empathic parents (most often the mother) contribute to healthy development of the child’s self through mirroring, allowing the child to also see its own imperfections through interactions with parents (Rhodewalt & Sorrow, 2003).

Clinical and non-clinical forms of narcissism

In the clinical form, we consider narcissism a personality and behavioral disorder. One of the most accepted definitions is the one provided by the American Psychiatric Association. According to this definition it includes grandiose feelings of one’s own importance, fantasies about oneself, feelings of uniqueness and specialness, need for admiration, exploitative behavior, lack of empathy, haughty behavior, and envy. Narcissistic personality disorder is currently defined by nine symptoms (APA, 2013), and a narcissistic individual: 1. exaggerates one’s own importance, abilities, and achievements and requires that others value them as such; 2. in fantasy deals with endless personal success, power, and beauty; 3. is convinced of one’s own exceptionality and uniqueness and therefore can associate only with exceptional people because they understand one; 4. requires excessive admiration from others; 5. expects automatic fulfillment of one’s desires and expectations; 6. uses others solely to achieve one’s own goals; 7. cannot recognize the needs and feelings of others; 8. often envies and is convinced that others envy him; 9. behaves arrogantly and disdainfully.

The construct of subclinical narcissism emerged from a study published in 1979 by Raskin and Hall. The authors developed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a test for measuring nonclinical narcissism. Facets taken from the clinical syndrome were included as grandiosity, entitlement, dominance, and superiority (Raskin & Hall, 1979).

The successful transition from clinical to subclinical narcissism has also been demonstrated in studies published by Morf and Rhodewalt (2001a). Narcissists can be described as individuals with a fragile, exaggerated, and unstable self-image that is dependent on social context or situation. In Morf and Rhodewalt’s (2001b) model, the narcissistic self-system is described through three units: self-knowledge, interpersonal strategies, and intrapersonal processes.

Based on their own empirical research, Morf and Rhodewalt (2001b) described narcissism as a grandiose yet vulnerable self-concept. Of the four basic traits of narcissism, these authors list (Morf & Rhodewalt; 2001a): 1. the need for positive reactions; 2. distortion of reality into a form that allows perception of the self as better; 3. anxiety (when reality does not correspond to the constructed self-image [Campbell, et al. 2004;]); 4. willingness to sacrifice high-quality interpersonal relationships for high social status and appreciation.

Narcissism scores are generally higher in men than in women (Campbell, et al., 2004). Although a substantial amount of research on narcissism has been conducted in the past, gender differences cannot be indicated with certainty. In terms of professional orientation, experts focused attention on narcissistic personality traits among medical students (Munro, Bore & Powis, 2005), law students (Carney, 1990), and economics students (Westerman et al., 2011), where significantly higher levels of narcissistic personality traits were found than among psychology students.

Narcissistic self-regulation

According to DSM-IV (APA, 1994), narcissists are preoccupied with success, beauty, power, and brilliance. They live on the interpersonal stage, where they display exhibitionistic behavior and demand attention and admiration from other people. When their self-esteem is threatened, they respond with anger, defiance, shame, and humiliation. In addition, they express a sense of entitlement and expectations of special treatment. They are unwilling to reciprocate kindness, are unempathetic, and exploit others. Their relationships oscillate between idealization and devaluation.

Narcissists suffer from dispositional deficits in self-control, which contributes to their inability to meet the high self-regulatory demands of an inflated and unstable self-concept (Block, in Vazire & Funder, 2006). As results from the meta-analysis by Vazire and Funder (2006) show, there is clear evidence of a link between narcissism and impulsivity. Narcissists are described as impulsive, impatient, unable to delay gratification, and lacking enough self-control even under the influence of themselves, a partner, friends, or unrelated observers.

Narcissistic self-conception cooperates with the environment through self-regulatory intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies whose function is to protect or strengthen a positive self-concept. Narcissists are quick to perceive implications for self-esteem in situations that allow this, and then engage in characteristic socio-cognitive-affective dynamic self-regulatory strategies to maintain self-esteem (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001a). The self-regulatory process in narcissists serves motivated self-construction aimed at building or maintaining the required self and meeting self-evaluative needs.

Intrapersonal strategies include interpretation of the situation; interpersonal strategies concern manipulation and seeking admirers (Rhodewalt & Sorrow, 2003). Rhodewalt and Eddings (2002) provide evidence of intrapersonal self-regulation by noting that, in response to threat, narcissists’ autobiographical memories are adjusted or distorted. This is particularly pronounced among those narcissists who have experienced romantic rejection. Positive bias in events serves the defense of self-confidence and self-concept.

For a person with narcissistic inclinations, the aim is to achieve positive social reactions and minimize criticism directed at themselves (Bushman & Baumeister 1998); they are characterized by active manipulation of feedback. For example, a narcissistic person seeks social relationships where admiration will be shown to them, which in turn strengthens their self-concept (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001b). They are also focused on positive self-presentation and mainly affiliate with successful people. It is likely that rivalry is also very important for narcissists, since competitive situations demonstrate their superiority and represent an opportunity to gain admiration (Campbell, Goodie, Foster, 2008).

At the core of narcissistic self-regulation is a grandiose but vulnerable self-concept. This fragility leads narcissists to a continuous need for external self-confirmation, which relates to the fact that this self-construction effort unfolds in the social domain (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001b). Rhodewalt and Sorrow (2003) note that narcissists use interpersonal self-regulation when they use their own friends so that they feel good about themselves. They demand attention and admiration at the expense of relationships with people, although they depend on such feedback. Their strategies are motivated by the protection of their own self-image. Narcissism involves a dynamic self-regulatory central system whose purpose is to obtain and maintain a favorable self-image/self-esteem. As mentioned, narcissists use other people mainly to achieve this goal. Importantly, there is no limit to when narcissists stop striving to achieve positive self-regard. The overall dynamics remain active for the narcissistic person until self-improvement is no longer possible (Rhodewalt & Sorrow, 2003). Narcissism involves an urgent need for self-enhancement or dependence on ego. People with high levels of narcissism have a grandiose view of themselves and use every opportunity to strengthen these beliefs (Campbell, Rudich & Sedikides, 2002).

Regarding narcissistic self-regulation in the context of social relationships, Campbell and Campbellová (2009) describe emergent and chronic zones. In the emergent zone, relationships are relatively new and provide greater benefits for both sides for narcissists and for the people with whom they interact. Relationships in the chronic zone are longer-term and undesirable. They push the narcissist to seek new relationships.

As Paulhus and John (1998) convincingly argued, narcissists mainly engage in egoistic self-deceptive self-enhancement. They see themselves as demigods who are intelligent, dominant, and emotionally stable. Conversely, it is unlikely that they would simultaneously see themselves as especially moral, agreeable, and conscientious.

Narcissism is associated with self-enhancement, especially regarding socially valued traits such as intelligence, level of ability, and attractiveness. However, they do not try to improve social characteristics and also do not score highly in social desirability. Narcissists tend to overestimate their contribution in group tasks, which positively biases the evaluation of their behavior. They are also more inclined toward internal attributions of success and external attributions of failure (Vazire & Funder, 2006).

Goal-oriented behavior of narcissists

Studies by Carver and White suggest that narcissistic behavior is driven mainly by reward motivation (Carver & White, 1994). According to empirical findings by Brunell et al. (2008), narcissists do not have stronger or weaker desires than ordinary people who do not exhibit a higher level of narcissistic personality traits. The research, however, found that narcissistic individuals had fewer approach-avoidance conflicts. These people considered it sufficient reason to act simply because they wanted to do something (Brunell et al., 2008).

Elliot (1999) proposes that self-confidence strongly influences goal adoption. Morf, Weir, and Davidov (2000) examined the role of narcissistic dynamics in motivation and found that narcissists tend to achieve goals in order to demonstrate their superiority over others, especially when dealing with performance goals. Their research showed a positive relationship between narcissism and approach-oriented motivation.

Gerhardtová and Le (2013) hypothesized a positive relationship between approach motivation in goal-directed behavior and narcissism, and conversely a negative relationship between avoidance motivation in goal-directed behavior and narcissism. Their hypotheses were empirically confirmed. They suggest that rewards for narcissists arising from a performance approach to goal-directed behavior are attractive because they increase their ego. According to the authors, this relationship is direct and does not involve a self-esteem process.

Narcissistic norms

Through different norms, procedures, and roles relevant in different social groups in different sociocultural contexts, people establish the framework for self-regulatory strategies. These can also be useful for narcissists in their attempts to achieve their grandiose goals (Campbell & Miller, 2012).

In general, it can be said that narcissists are not concerned with societal rules or norms. Their goal is to set the level of their regulation so that it is possible to fulfill their ideal self-image (Campbell & Miller, 2012). Narcissists’ social behavior is often focused on maximizing their own self-esteem (for example, by trying to gain admiration from others) as part of the effort to confirm their grandiose self (Morf & Rhodewalt, 1993).

There is evidence suggesting that narcissism may be linked to aggression. Kernberg (in Bushman & Baumeister, 1998) stated that narcissists are overly sensitive to slight insults or criticism and are prone to hostile responses (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).

Bushman and Baumeister (1998) investigated participants’ aggressive tendencies and were able to show that people who scored high in narcissism had a tendency to respond aggressively to provocation. Based on these findings, they concluded that individuals with emotional and motivational investments in an exceptionally favorable grandiose self-image exhibited the highest level of aggressiveness.

Research aim

The aim of our study was to map how self-regulation differs between people showing narcissistic personality traits and people who do not, in a situation where there is an opportunity to violate a norm in order to achieve a goal.

Research sample

The study involved 165 university students aged 18 to 26, with a mean age of 21.7 years and a standard deviation of 1.78. The sample consisted of 56 men, representing 33.9% of all respondents, and 109 women, representing 66.1% of respondents. The average age of men was 22.6 and the average age of women was 21.2 years.

Methodology

The basis of the methodology was a scenario describing a situation in which a student’s task was to write a term paper. While searching for relevant information, they encounter a very similar paper online and face the decision of whether to copy it and present it as their own or not.

Participants expressed the strength of their normative beliefs (injunctive, descriptive, personal) related to this situation on a 6-point Likert scale. They were then asked to rate on a 6-point scale the extent to which they considered it likely they would perform the act, that is, whether they would present someone else’s work as their own.

To measure the nonclinical form of narcissism we used a translated version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory by Raskin and Terry (1988). The questionnaire consists of 16 pairs of statements. Participants were instructed to choose in each pair the statement that best reflects their feelings and opinions about themselves. Based on the scoring key of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which indicates which statement relates to narcissistic personality, we added one point for each item in which an individual showed subclinical narcissism. On the basis of this methodology, an individual is considered to have a subclinical narcissistic personality if they score 8 or more points. Individuals who scored 7 points or fewer are considered non-narcissists (Raskin & Terry, 1988).

Results

First, we were interested in whether there were statistically significant differences in the likelihood of norm violation in order to achieve an academic goal between respondents showing narcissistic personality traits (further referred to as subclinical narcissists, i.e., narcissists) and those who do not show them (further referred to as non-narcissists).

From Table 1 it follows that in our sample there were more non-narcissists than narcissists. Because normality assumptions were met in both groups, for both non-narcissists and narcissists, our assumptions were tested using a parametric t-test for two independent samples. Statistical testing at the chosen significance level p<0,05 did not show statistically significant differences between narcissists and non-narcissists in the intention to submit someone else’s paper as their own, although the average score of narcissists was somewhat higher than that of non-narcissists.

Tab. 1 Parametric t-test for 2 independent samples for narcissists and non-narcissists in intention

We also tested the hypothesis that we had assumed—that there is no statistically significant difference between subclinical narcissists and non-narcissists in normative beliefs about submitting or not submitting another person’s work as one’s own—on the basis of the gross score obtained in the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the scores obtained on individual items about normative beliefs—descriptive, injunctive, personal. We also tested this hypothesis using a parametric t-test for two independent samples. Based on the results, we concluded that there are no statistically significant differences between subclinical narcissists and non-narcissists in normative beliefs about submitting or not submitting another person’s work as one’s own.

Tab. 2 Parametric t-test for 2 independent samples for narcissists and non-narcissists in normative beliefs

Discussion and conclusion

In the context of the study goals we sought to address the topic of subclinical narcissism. While the clinical form of narcissism is considered a personality disorder, the subclinical form is considered one of the three so-called dark sides of personality (Paulhus, William, 2002). In this context, narcissists are defined as individuals with a fragile self-image, a need for excessive recognition from others, and distortion of reality into a form that allows them to perceive themselves as better. The function of self-regulation in narcissists is to obtain and maintain a favorable self-image. The literature reviewed indicates that narcissists are motivated to achieve goals in order to demonstrate their superiority over other people, while often ignoring norms that prevent them from achieving the goal (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).

Although the average score of subclinical narcissists on the measured likelihood of norm violation for goal attainment was somewhat higher than that of non-narcissists, the results did not confirm the significance of this difference. Nevertheless, these findings correspond to theoretical assumptions indicating a higher tendency toward approach-oriented goal strategies than avoidance-oriented behavior (Gerhardt & Le, 2013), even at the expense of morality in action, because morality is not at the center of narcissists’ attention (Paulhus & John, 1998).

In normative beliefs about submitting or not submitting someone else’s work as one’s own, significant differences between narcissists and non-narcissists were also not confirmed. Subclinical narcissists nevertheless had somewhat higher scores in each normative belief than non-narcissists, indicating that narcissists were more convinced of the legitimacy of immoral behavior on the way to goal achievement. This result corresponds to the findings of Campbell and Miller (2012), who argued on the basis of their findings that narcissists are not concerned with rules set by society because their main aim is to achieve and maintain their ideal self-image.

Even though the results did not confirm our assumptions about the morality of behavior of subclinical narcissists in goal-directed behavior, we consider this study valuable as a contribution to the understanding of this issue, which has not yet been sufficiently developed under local conditions.

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