Dynamics of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability in naturalistic and experimental settings

Abstract

Theoretical accounts of narcissism emphasize 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 studies have characterized dynamics of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability in relation to perceptions of the interpersonal environment. Experimental studies have emphasized 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 current study examined shifts in grandiosity and vulnerability in both naturalistic (ecological momentary assessment) 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. The current study reinforces the importance of status threatening environments to expressions within narcissism and elucidates important differences with respect to expressions of grandiosity and vulnerability across naturalistic and experimental methods.