In Defense of Self-Love: An Observational Study on Narcissists' Negative Behavior During Romantic Relationship Conflict

Abstract

Research suggests narcissists respond negatively to ego-threats stemming from both negative evaluative feedback (Bushman, B. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). 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, 75, 219–229) and negative social feedback (Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2003). “Isn't it fun to get the respect that we're going to deserve?” Narcissism, social rejection, and aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 261–272). In the current study, we used an observational methodology to examine whether narcissists also respond negatively to romantic relationship conflict. Multi-level analyses revealed that people high (vs. low) in narcissism were observed by independent coders as engaging in significantly more negative behaviors (i.e., criticizing, name-calling, insulting) during a conflict with their romantic partner. Post-conflict, narcissists reported feeling less committed to their relationships, while reporting that their partners felt more committed to their relationships. Together, these results suggest that narcissists self-protectively derogate relationship partners both during and after conflict as a way to defend against relationship-threats.

Keywords::

• Narcissism
• Romantic relationships
• Threat
• Self-enhancement

Acknowledgements

The current research was part of the first author's dissertation. We thank the Advanced Doctoral Fellowship and the Research Mentoring Program (RMP) from Loyola University Chicago for providing the funding for this research.

Notes

^1. Dropping same-sex couples from the analyses did not change the pattern of findings.

^2. Data from this study were also reported in Peterson and DeHart (2013), study 2. Findings regarding narcissism and negative verbal behavior were not reported in that research.

^3. If members of a couple were of the same sex, independent observers only coded one partner, never both.

^4. Analyses were also run to explore whether partner narcissism interacted with participants own levels of narcissism to predict behavior and commitment (Actor-Partner Interdependence Model; Kenny & Kashy, 2000). None of the interactions between participant narcissism and partner narcissism were significant (b's ≤ .001, p ≥ .46) and therefore they were not included in the final model.

^5. We also explored whether gender moderated the effect of narcissism on observer-rated behaviors and self-reported relationship perceptions. Gender did not moderate any of the effects reported in the paper (b's ≤ .009, p ≥ .24).