{"id":207643,"date":"2025-10-12T14:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T14:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/207643\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T14:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T14:15:09","slug":"what-weve-learned-about-the-psychology-of-narcissism-over-the-past-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/207643\/","title":{"rendered":"What we\u2019ve learned about the psychology of narcissism over the past 30\u00a0years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stay informed on the latest psychology and neuroscience research\u2014follow PsyPost on LinkedIn for daily updates and insights.<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably seen the word \u201cnarcissist\u201d thrown around online in headlines, on dating apps or in therapy-themed TikToks. But the label that people often unthinkingly slap on toxic bosses or reality TV villains hides a much more complicated psychological picture.<\/p>\n

Psychologists have studied narcissism for many years, but over time, our understanding has evolved. One of the biggest changes is that today, narcissism is no longer seen as just grandiosity, arrogance or egotism.<\/p>\n

Early scientific descriptions of narcissism focused on dominance<\/a>, ambition and self-importance, all of which are traits associated with traditional masculine stereotypes. That meant narcissistic tendencies in women were often misread or overlooked. When those traits show up as emotional sensitivity<\/a>, insecurity or relational manipulation, they sometimes still are misdiagnosed as anxiety, mood disorders or borderline personality disorder<\/a> traits.<\/p>\n

The most extreme and persistent forms of narcissism can sometimes be diagnosed as narcissistic personality disorder. This condition was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders<\/a>, the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s diagnostic manual, in 1980. But most people with narcissistic tendencies won\u2019t meet the threshold for a diagnosis.<\/p>\n

So what does the research actually say?<\/p>\n

Narcissism in general is now understood<\/a> as a complex set of personality characteristics that can show up in different ways.<\/p>\n

Psychologists had long suspected that there might be different kinds of narcissism, but it wasn\u2019t until 1991 \u2013 when researcher Paul Wink and his colleagues presented a model<\/a> including grandiose and vulnerable subtypes \u2013 that they were more formally recognised. Although there are other models, this remains one of the more popular approaches to understanding narcissistic tendencies in the wider population.<\/p>\n

A 2021 review<\/a> by US psychologist Joshua Miller and his colleagues pulled together decades of research to offer one of the most authoritative summaries of how psychologists now understand narcissism. It explains that narcissism has a common foundation, which includes things such as self-importance and entitlement. It then branches into different forms of narcissism, such as grandiosity, antagonism and vulnerability.<\/p>\n

Researchers now often use the terms grandiose and vulnerable<\/a> to describe two major forms of narcissism. One person with narcissistic traits may be bold with high levels of grandiose traits, confidence and emotional resilience. Another might be defensive, anxious and hypersensitive to criticism. Both show signs of narcissistic self-focus, but they end up looking quite different in how they experience and express emotion.<\/p>\n

In a 2022 research paper<\/a> I wrote with colleagues, we carried out the first meta-analysis examining how narcissistic traits relate to the ability to control one\u2019s emotions. The results showed that vulnerable narcissism is consistently associated with greater emotional difficulty, which means these people might find it harder to keep their emotions in check.<\/p>\n

In particular, people with high scores on vulnerable narcissism scales are more likely to rely on suppression. Suppression is a strategy that people use to hide or inhibit their emotional expressions, and has been linked to poorer wellbeing<\/a>. On the surface, suppression might sound like self-control.<\/p>\n

In some situations, it can be. For example, keeping a lid on your emotions when your boss is yelling at you. But trying to mute emotional expression without addressing the underlying emotions increases stress when it becomes our default strategy. It can worsen mental and physical health over time.<\/p>\n

In contrast, grandiose narcissism wasn\u2019t linked with emotion regulation difficulties. In fact, several of the studies included in our analysis suggest that people with higher levels of grandiose traits may not experience as much emotional distress in the first place. This challenges the popular idea among researchers that people who exhibit narcissistic tendencies are also experiencing emotional instability.<\/p>\n

Emotional intelligence and self-perception<\/p>\n

The differences between forms of narcissism show up in emotional intelligence research as well. In a 2021 systematic review<\/a> on narcissism and emotional intelligence, my colleagues and I found that people with grandiose traits often said they were good at understanding and managing emotions. For instance, how well they think they can handle anger or recognise other\u2019s emotions.<\/p>\n

But when their skills were tested using emotion tasks (such as recognising facial expressions or identifying the best way to respond to an emotional situation), their performance didn\u2019t always match up with how skilled they said they were. This is consistent with a 2018 study<\/a> which also found that people with grandiose tendencies rated themselves as emotionally skilled but performed worse on skill-based emotional intelligence tasks compared to other participants.<\/p>\n

In contrast, people with vulnerable narcissistic traits tend to rate themselves lower in emotional intelligence, and seem to genuinely struggle more with managing emotions in everyday life.<\/p>\n

So what should we make of all this?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to move beyond the pop-psych trend of labelling difficult people as narcissists. Narcissism isn\u2019t about taking too many selfies. And no, the partner who ghosted you or the colleague who dominates meetings isn\u2019t necessarily high in narcissistic traits either \u2013 no matter how much we might like to complain about them over coffee.<\/p>\n

These kinds of casual diagnoses aren\u2019t just unhelpful, they\u2019re often wrong.<\/p>\n

Narcissism is a complex psychological pattern that can show up in different ways and can reflect a deeper struggle with things such as self-esteem, emotion regulation and social connection. Understanding this doesn\u2019t excuse people\u2019s bad behaviour \u2013 not at all. But it does help us look past the stereotypes to get a clearer picture of what narcissistic traits look like in everyday life.\"The<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed on the latest psychology and neuroscience research\u2014follow PsyPost on LinkedIn for daily updates and insights. You\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-207643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}