The happy and unhappy faces of narcissism
Section snippets
Method
Two-hundred sixty-two undergraduates (146 female) completed a questionnaire packet in small groups. Participants sat at private desks in a large laboratory room. Participants with missing values on any of the variables of interest were excluded.
Results
Table 1 lists the interscale correlations among overt and covert narcissism, self-esteem, happiness and self-deception. As predicted, overt narcissists reported greater happiness and higher self-esteem, whereas covert narcissists reported diminished happiness and lower self-esteem. These results are consistent with the notion that overt narcissists enjoy some psychological benefits that covert narcissists do not enjoy.
Because past research has demonstrated that the NPI subscales capture
Discussion
A potential source of confusion in the study of narcissism is the fact that narcissistic features differ widely in their associations with psychological adjustment. In this study I demonstrated that indicators of overt narcissism were positively related to self-esteem and happiness whereas indicators of covert narcissism were negatively related to self-esteem and happiness. These results join a broader collection of evidence suggesting that overt and covert narcissism are very different
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by NIMH predoctoral fellowship 1F31MH13036-01 awarded to the author. I thank Paul Watson, Ryan Brown, Katherine Rose and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank Shital Patel and Brian Pagkos for administering the study.
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