Studies of narcissism

It’s been a while since I posted anything about narcissism. The three studies we examine today may be helpful. First, Rogoza, Baran, Flakus, Krammer & Fatfouta (2024) published “Introducing the Narcissistic Antagonism Scale: A missing puzzle piece in the assessment of momentary narcissism” in Psychological Assessment. Here’s the edited abstract:

Narcissism is a relatively stable personality trait, which is most accurately described by three facets: agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic. Existing studies support the central role of antagonistic narcissism and its role in explaining the process of fluctuation in narcissism. However, there is a lack of a suitable adjective-based measure of antagonistic narcissism, resulting in intensive longitudinal studies assessing only agentic and neurotic narcissism. To address this gap and to advance research on fluctuations in narcissism, this article introduces the Narcissistic Antagonism Scale (NAS). Across six studies (total N = 1,862; k = 14,927 observations), we establish the NAS’s factorial, convergent, and divergent validity; reliability; and temporal stability. The three-factor model of narcissism, including antagonistic aspects, reproduces and proves to be invariant across daily and momentary perspectives. The NAS exhibits good psychometric properties at both between- and within-person levels. It is a valuable addition for intensive longitudinal studies and facilitates a nuanced examination of narcissistic states across diverse contexts. 

While I can’t endorse the scale itself, since I haven’t seen it, I thought the distinction among agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism interesting. Edershile, Szücs, Dombrovski & Wright (2024) published “Dynamics of Narcissistic Grandiosity and Vulnerability in Naturalistic and Experimental Settings” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The edited abstract follows:

Theoretical accounts of narcissism emphasize the dynamic shifting of self-states in response to social feedback. Status threats are thought to set narcissism’s dynamics in motion. Naturalistic ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies have characterized dynamics of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability in relation to perceptions of the interpersonal environment. Experimental studies have emphasized the behavioral responses of narcissistic individuals to putative threats to status. Naturalistic and experimental studies suffer from opposing limitations, namely, a potential for confounding variables to impact results versus ambiguous generalizability to real-life and longer time scales, respectively. Integrating naturalistic and experimental studies has the potential to provide a comprehensive model of how dynamics within narcissism unfold in response to status threat. The present study examined shifts in grandiosity and vulnerability in both naturalistic EMA and experimentally controlled (rigged tournament game) social interactions (N = 437). Grandiosity decreased and vulnerability increased in response to both naturalistic and experimental status threats. Further, the same people who responded with decreased grandiosity in response to status threat in daily life responded with similar decreases in grandiosity to experimental defeat. Trait narcissistic agency amplified many of the observed links between narcissism and status threat experimentally and naturalistically. Given that warmth (in addition to dominance) emerged as an important predictor of shifts in narcissism, implications for status-threatening environments are discussed. The present study elucidates important differences with respect to expressions of grandiosity and vulnerability across naturalistic and experimental methods. 

Here we see the effect of threats to status in decreased grandiosity and increased vulnerability. Trait narcissistic agency had stronger impacts. The next study also looks at vulnerability, this time in terms of ostracism. Büttner, Rudert, Albath, Sibley & Greifeneder (2025) published “Narcissists’ Experience of Ostracism” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The edited abstract is as follows:

Ostracism—being excluded and ignored—has severe, negative consequences. What is less clear is why some individuals become frequent targets of ostracism in the first place. In two nationally representative panel surveys, one experience sampling study, and six experiments (Ntotal = 77,289), we examine associations between grandiose narcissism and ostracism. Cross-sectional panel data (Study 1) and a 14-day experience sampling study (Study 2) show a strong link between narcissism and reporting ostracism more frequently. Subsequent studies provide insight into three mechanisms underlying this relationship: First, experiments show that narcissists are more sensitive to ambiguous but not to unambiguous exclusion cues (negative perceptions mechanism; Studies 3a, 3b, and 3c; integrative data analysis; and Study 4). Second, other individuals exclude narcissists more often because of their narcissistic traits (target behavior mechanism, Studies 5 and 6). This holds true both when narcissistic traits, especially narcissistic rivalry, are explicitly described and when narcissistic traits are implicitly inferred from short introduction videos. Finally, Study 7 longitudinally tests over 14 years whether narcissism is an antecedent and outcome of frequent exclusion. Supporting a reverse causality mechanism, deviations in ostracism were followed by deviations in narcissism 1 year later, and vice versa. Our findings demonstrate how negative perceptions, target behavior, and reverse causality together determine who gets ostracized, from the perspective of those who get ostracized and those who decide to ostracize. We discuss how the present approach can be used as a framework to understand personality risk factors for frequent negative social experiences. 

I found it helpful to have data indicating that people just don’t like narcissists. Not surprising, but it is interesting that narcissists are more sensitive to ambiguous than unambiguous cues. It seems important to recognize how vulnerable narcissists are to social cues. I’d love to see research differentiating antagonistic, agentic, and neurotic narcissists in response to status threats and ostracism.