Grandiose narcissists tend to exaggerate their abilities in order to maintain an overly positive view of themselves. Recent research has revealed that while some narcissists limit their boasting to areas of personal ability, those who focus on their own moral superiority brag about almost everything. These findings were published in Current Issues in Personality Psychology.
Self-enhancement is a basic psychological process in which people exaggerate their positive qualities to protect their self-esteem. Typically, people only make such exaggerations about traits that they personally value highly. For people with high levels of narcissism, the urge to appear superior is a key personality trait.
Psychologists generally divide narcissism into two broad categories known as vulnerable and grandiose. Vulnerable narcissists hide deep insecurities behind a fragile exterior and avoid drawing attention to themselves. Grandiose narcissists are highly extroverted, socially dominant, and highly motivated to convince others of their exceptional nature.
Grandiose narcissism can be further divided into agentic narcissism and communal narcissism. Agentic narcissists seek approval through traits associated with power, competence, and personal success. Communal narcissists seek approval by appearing to be much purer, kinder, and morally superior to everyone around them.
The concept of communal narcissism is receiving renewed attention in psychology. Most people associate narcissistic behavior with arrogant business leaders and conceited celebrities, so finding such communal variants in everyday life is much more difficult. Communal narcissists may control charities or demand endless praise for their supportive parenting style.
Researchers can further divide these two main categories based on whether narcissists rely on self-promotion or on bringing others down. Within the realm of agency, individuals may rely on admiration to attract others or rely on competitiveness to maintain an advantage by devaluing competitors. Within the communal realm, people may demonstrate holiness by showing extreme kindness. Alternatively, they may demonstrate heroism by framing their social intervention as uniquely important to the world.
First author Weronika Zyskowska and corresponding author Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska wanted to understand exactly how these different groups exaggerate their characteristics. The two scientists are both personality researchers at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. They partnered with psychologists from the University of Gdańsk and Nicola Cusano University in Rome. The researchers suspected that a person’s cultural background might influence the specific ways in which they express their inflated sense of self.
The study involved 306 college students who volunteered to complete an online assessment. The participants were roughly evenly split between students living in Poland and students living in Italy. The researchers chose these two countries because they have slightly different fundamental cultural values.
Both Poland and Italy score similarly on cultural indicators related to personal mastery and personal ambition. The two countries have different opinions when it comes to social harmony. Italian culture generally tends to place a higher value on communal traits, which the researchers thought might lead to more communal pride.
The researchers measured self-enhancement tendencies using two different methods. The first method included an overclaim questionnaire designed to catch participants exaggerating their personal knowledge. The second method measured better-than-average effectiveness by asking participants to rank their own personality traits compared to their typical peers.
To measure overbilling, the survey presented participants with a list of topics that spanned both agentic subjects, such as physical science, and collaborative subjects, such as humanitarian aid. For each topic, the list contained four real terms and two completely false terms. If participants claimed to be familiar with the fake terms, researchers might be able to accurately measure their tendency to exaggerate.
The second assessment asked students to rate themselves on a variety of personality traits compared to the average student. These traits included agentic qualities such as intelligence and assertiveness, along with communal qualities such as warmth and morality. The study measured how easily participants placed themselves in the highest percentile in both areas. Participants had to clearly decide whether they were in the top 5% of all their colleagues.
After analyzing the data, the researchers found that agentic narcissists behave as expected based on prior literature. People who scored high on agentic admiration consistently overestimated their own knowledge and ranked themselves as superior in areas related to intelligence and personal ability. They did not claim excessive knowledge of their common subject.
Another form of agentic narcissism was less exaggerated. Narcissistic rivalry is rarely correlated with self-enhancement across both countries. They seem to be solely focused on protecting themselves from perceived threats, rather than promoting grand visions of their own brilliance.
The findings regarding communal narcissism were somewhat surprising. The researchers expected these people to overestimate their knowledge in areas related to social good and morality. Instead, those scoring high on narcissistic holiness exaggerated their familiarity with both communal and strictly agentic topics.
Data shows that communal narcissists want to be seen as highly moral, but they also want to be perceived as highly competent. They seem willing to use the domain of agency, including appearing highly intelligent, as a means to achieve a common goal. Their ultimate drive to look better than average spilled over into both categories.
The researchers initially hypothesized that Italian students would show a stronger association between communal narcissism and communal grandiosity. The results did not support this idea. In the Italian sample, narcissistic traits were not associated with false knowledge overclaims at all.
Although Italian communal narcissists did show stronger-than-average effects, the results differed markedly from the Polish cohort. Researchers note that exaggerating one’s knowledge may simply occur within that particular cultural environment, independent of narcissism. Overall, the general culture predictions were not statistically significant.
The researchers noted several limitations to the current study. There was a huge disproportionate number of women in the participants compared to men. In general, women tend to score higher on communal narcissism, while men tend to score higher on enactment narcissism, meaning that an uneven gender split may be skewing the baseline numbers.
Reliance on the college student population introduces another potential bias. In an academic environment, intellectual ability and factual knowledge are highly evaluated. This particular setting can pressure even the most outgoing narcissists to exaggerate their intelligence to fit in with their peers.
This study utilized a correlational design and cannot prove that narcissistic traits directly lead to overdemanding behavior. The researchers hope that future studies will examine these patterns in the general community using populations other than students. They also suggest employing an experimental testing model to see how these individuals respond when their egos are positively stimulated.
Understanding how different narcissists self-enhance can help individuals overcome manipulative behavior at work and in personal relationships. Recognizing these patterns ultimately allows people to view grand claims with appropriate skepticism.
The study, “I’m so smart: agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and overassertion among Polish and Italian students,” was authored by Weronika Ziszkowska, Calogero Lo Destro, Artur Sawicki, Michał Szejkowski, and Magdalena Zemoyter Piotrowska.
