Grandiose narcissists tend to inflate their own abilities to maintain an excessively positive view of themselves. A recent study reveals that while some narcissists restrict their bragging to areas of personal competence, those focused on their own moral superiority will boast about almost everything. These findings were published in Current Issues in Personality Psychology.
Self-enhancement is a basic psychological process where people exaggerate their positive qualities to protect their self-esteem. Normally, people only engage in this exaggeration when it comes to traits they personally value highly. For individuals with high levels of narcissism, this drive to appear superior becomes a dominant personality feature.
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 extraverted, socially dominant, and deeply motivated to convince others of their exceptional nature.
Grandiose narcissism can be further separated into agentic and communal variations. Agentic narcissists seek validation through traits associated with power, competence, and individual success. Communal narcissists seek validation by appearing exceptionally pure, helpful, or morally superior to everyone around them.
The concept of communal narcissism is an emerging focus in psychology. Most people associate narcissistic behavior with arrogant business leaders or vain celebrities, making the communal variant much harder to spot in daily life. A communal narcissist might dominate a charity organization or demand endless praise for their supportive parenting style.
Researchers can divide these two main categories even further based on whether the narcissist relies on self-promotion or the tearing down of others. Within the agentic domain, individuals might rely on admiration to charm others or rivalry to maintain dominance by devaluing competitors. Within the communal domain, people might display sanctity by showcasing their extreme kindness. Alternatively, they might exhibit heroism by framing their social interventions as uniquely essential to the world.
Lead author Weronika Zyskowska and corresponding author Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska wanted to understand how exactly these different groups exaggerate their traits. The two scientists are both personality researchers at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. They partnered with psychologists at the University of Gdańsk and Nicola Cusano University in Rome. The research team suspected that a person’s cultural background might influence the specific ways they express their inflated ego.
The study included 306 university students volunteering for an online assessment. The participants were split almost evenly between students living in Poland and students living in Italy. The researchers chose these two countries because they possess slightly different baseline cultural values.
Poland and Italy both score similarly on cultural metrics related to personal mastery and individual ambition. The two nations diverge when it comes to social harmony. Italian culture tends to place a higher general value on communal traits, which the researchers thought might translate into more communal boasting.
The researchers measured self-enhancement tendencies using two distinct methods. The first method involved an overclaiming questionnaire designed to catch participants exaggerating their personal knowledge. The second method measured the better-than-average effect, asking participants to rank their own personality traits against their typical peers.
To measure overclaiming, the survey presented participants with a list of topics spanning both agentic subjects like physical science and communal subjects like humanitarian aid. For each topic, the list included four real terms and two completely fake terms. If a participant claimed to be highly familiar with the fake terms, the researchers could accurately measure their tendency to exaggerate.
The second assessment asked students to rate themselves on a variety of character traits compared to the average student. These traits included agentic qualities like intelligence and assertiveness alongside communal qualities like warmth and morality. The survey measured how readily participants placed themselves in the highest percentiles across both domains. The participants had to explicitly decide whether they belonged in the top five percent of all their peers.
When analyzing the data, the researchers found that agentic narcissists operate exactly as expected based on prior literature. Individuals scoring high in agentic admiration consistently overestimated their own knowledge and ranked themselves as superior in areas related to intellect and personal competence. They did not claim excessive knowledge regarding communal subjects.
The other form of agentic narcissism featured much less exaggeration. Narcissistic rivalry rarely correlated with any form of self-enhancement across both countries. Those individuals appear to focus solely on protecting themselves from perceived threats rather than promoting a grandiose vision of their own brilliance.
The findings regarding the communal narcissists were somewhat surprising. The researchers expected these individuals to overestimate their knowledge strictly in areas related to social good or morality. Instead, those scoring high in narcissistic sanctity exaggerated their familiarity with both communal topics and strictly agentic topics.
The data indicate that communal narcissists want to be seen as exceptionally moral, but they also want to be recognized as highly competent. They appear willing to use agentic domains, like appearing highly intelligent, as a means to achieve their communal goals. Their ultimate drive to look better than average spilled across both categories.
The researchers initially hypothesized that the Italian students would show stronger links between communal narcissism and communal exaggeration. The results did not support this idea. In the Italian sample, narcissistic traits were not associated with the overclaiming of fake knowledge at all.
While the Italian communal narcissists did display a strong better-than-average effect, their results diverged noticeably from the Polish cohort. The researchers note that exaggerating one’s knowledge might simply occur independently of narcissism within that specific cultural environment. Overall, the general cultural predictions were not statistically significant.
The researchers noted several limitations to their current study. The participant pool included heavily disproportionate numbers of women compared to men. Women generally score higher on communal narcissism while men tend to score higher on agentic narcissism, meaning the uneven gender split could have skewed the baseline numbers.
Relying on a university student population presents another potential bias. Academic environments strictly reward intellectual competence and factual knowledge. This specific setting might pressure even the most communal narcissist to exaggerate their intelligence to fit in with their peers.
The study utilized a correlational design, meaning it cannot prove that narcissistic traits lead directly to overclaiming behaviors. The researchers hope future studies will utilize non-student populations to verify these patterns in the general public. They also suggest adopting experimental testing models to see how these individuals react when their egos are actively provoked.
Understanding how different narcissists self-enhance can help individuals navigate manipulative behavior in the workplace or personal relationships. Recognizing these patterns ultimately allows people to view grandiose claims with appropriate skepticism.
The study, “I am so wise: Agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and overclaiming among Polish and Italian students,” was authored by Weronika Zyskowska, Calogero Lo Destro, Artur Sawicki, Michał Sękowski, and Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska.