Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Untangling the Links between Narcissism and Self‐esteem: A Theoretical and Empirical Review

Untangling the Links between Narcissism and Self‐esteem: A Theoretical and Empirical Review The links among narcissism, explicit (deliberate, controllable) self‐esteem, and implicit (automatic, uncontrollable) self‐esteem are unclear despite numerous attempts to illuminate these links. Some investigations suggest that narcissism reflects high explicit self‐esteem that masks low implicit self‐esteem, but other investigations fail to replicate this pattern. Here, we place the ‘mask’ model of narcissism in historical context and review the existing empirical evidence for this model. We then discuss three possible issues that might shed light on the inconsistent findings that have emerged from tests of the mask model. These issues include the unreliability of implicit attitude measures, narcissism's different associations with agentic versus communal self‐views, and distinctions between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism subtypes. We also summarize several alternatives to the mask model of narcissism. Throughout, we offer suggestions for improving the study of narcissism and self‐esteem and point to directions for future research on this topic. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Social and Personality Psychology Compass Wiley

Untangling the Links between Narcissism and Self‐esteem: A Theoretical and Empirical Review

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/untangling-the-links-between-narcissism-and-self-esteem-a-theoretical-zOMXRrRf0x

References (102)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2008 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
ISSN
1751-9004
eISSN
1751-9004
DOI
10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00089.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The links among narcissism, explicit (deliberate, controllable) self‐esteem, and implicit (automatic, uncontrollable) self‐esteem are unclear despite numerous attempts to illuminate these links. Some investigations suggest that narcissism reflects high explicit self‐esteem that masks low implicit self‐esteem, but other investigations fail to replicate this pattern. Here, we place the ‘mask’ model of narcissism in historical context and review the existing empirical evidence for this model. We then discuss three possible issues that might shed light on the inconsistent findings that have emerged from tests of the mask model. These issues include the unreliability of implicit attitude measures, narcissism's different associations with agentic versus communal self‐views, and distinctions between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism subtypes. We also summarize several alternatives to the mask model of narcissism. Throughout, we offer suggestions for improving the study of narcissism and self‐esteem and point to directions for future research on this topic.

Journal

Social and Personality Psychology CompassWiley

Published: May 1, 2008

There are no references for this article.