AbstractDoes self-love or self-hate lead to violence?
Introduction
The conventional view that low self-esteem underlies aggression is difficult to reconcile with common observations that aggressors often think very highly of themselves, as evidenced by nationalistic imperialism, “Master Race” ideologies, aristocratic dueling, playground bullies, and street gang rhetoric. A literature review by Baumeister, Smart, and Boden (1996) concluded that a subset of people with favorable views of self (especially inflated and unstable beliefs in personal superiority) are most likely to commit violent acts. These conceptions of excessive self-love are relevant to individual differences in narcissism and self-esteem. In our view, self-esteem scales often measure only minimal self-acceptance, whereas narcissism focuses on the quest for personal superiority. If an eroding sense of superiority is precisely what is most prone to lead to violence (Baumeister et al., 1996), then measures such as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale may prove to have little predictive utility, whereas narcissism may capture the relevant trait and attitudes precisely. We conducted two laboratory experiments to explicitly test the links among narcissism, self-esteem, and aggression (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).
Participants wrote a short essay that was evaluated by the “other participant.” Half the participants received negative (insulting) evaluations, whereas the other half received positive evaluations. Next, participants were given the opportunity to aggress against their evaluator by delivering blasts of loud noise though headphones. The results showed that narcissists were more aggressive than others, especially when they received a negative evaluation. Self-esteem was unrelated to aggression.
Experiment 2 investigated whether narcissists are more aggressive toward everyone, or only toward those who criticize them. Half the participants were told that the “other person” on the competitive reaction time task was the same person who had evaluated their essay. The rest were told that the “other person” was a third person who had not evaluated their essay. The results showed that the combination of narcissism and insult led to high levels of aggression toward the source of the insult. Narcissism did not affect displaced aggression, which was low in general. Self-esteem (measured this time with the Janis & Field, 1959 scale) proved irrelevant to aggression.
In a meta-analytic study, we compared narcissism and self-esteem scores for violent offenders and nonoffenders. (We thank Jim Gilligan for providing us data from the violent offender samples). The violent offenders were in prison in Massachusetts (N=45) or California (N=18) for murder, assault, forcible rape, or armed robbery.
To get a baseline for comparison of narcissism scores, we searched the Social Science Citation Index (1988–2000) to find samples of male nonoffenders who had completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Terry, 1988). To get a baseline for comparison of self-esteem scores, we searched the Social Science Citation Index (1965–2000) to find samples of male nonoffenders who had completed the Self Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). For narcissism, we located 19 independent samples (N=1707 participants) of non-offenders. For self-esteem, we located 69 independent samples (N=7590 participants) of non-offenders. Most samples were of college students, but many were not.
Violent offenders had higher narcissism scores than did non-offenders, Ms=21.82 and 17.09, respectively, t(1770)=12.75, p<.0001, d=0.63. There was no significant difference in self-esteem scores between violent offenders and non-offenders, Ms=28.90 and 28.89, respectively, t(7653)=0.02, p>.9, d=0.0001. These findings suggest that violent and nonviolent individuals can be distinguished on the basis of level of narcissism, but cannot be distinguished on the basis of self-esteem. Narcissism is thus a promising variable for predicting violence.
Section snippets
Conclusions
Experimental and cross-sectional evidence converges on the finding that narcissism predicts violent and aggressive behavior, especially when people receive a blow to their ego. In contrast, self-esteem is unrelated to aggression. Taken together, these findings contradict the popular view that low self-esteem causes aggression and point instead toward threatened egotism as an important cause.
References (6)
- et al.
Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem
Psychological Review
(1996) - et al.
Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(1998) - Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., & Gilligan, J. (2002). Self-love and self-loathing behind bars: Narcissism and...