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. 2018 Mar 14:9:343.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00343. eCollection 2018.

The Bright, the Dark, and the Blue Face of Narcissism: The Spectrum of Narcissism in Its Relations to the Metatraits of Personality, Self-Esteem, and the Nomological Network of Shyness, Loneliness, and Empathy

Radosław Rogoza  1 , Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska  1 , Maria M Kwiatkowska  1 , Katarzyna Kwiatkowska  1
Affiliations

The Bright, the Dark, and the Blue Face of Narcissism: The Spectrum of Narcissism in Its Relations to the Metatraits of Personality, Self-Esteem, and the Nomological Network of Shyness, Loneliness, and Empathy

Radosław Rogoza et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Grandiose and vulnerable narcissism seem to be uncorrelated in empirical studies, yet they share at least some theoretical similarities. In the current study, we examine the relation between grandiose (conceptualized as admiration and rivalry) and vulnerable narcissism in the context of the Big Five personality traits and metatraits, self-esteem, and their nomological network. To this end, participants (N = 314) filled in a set of self-report measures via an online survey. Rivalry was positively linked with both admiration and vulnerable narcissism. We replicated the relations of admiration and rivalry with personality traits and metatraits-as well as extended existing knowledge by providing support for the theory that vulnerable narcissism is simultaneously negatively related to the Stability and Plasticity. Higher scores on vulnerable narcissism and rivalry predicted having fragile self-esteem, whereas high scores on admiration predicted having optimal self-esteem. The assumed relations with the nomological network were confirmed, i.e., vulnerable narcissism and admiration demonstrated a contradictory pattern of relation to shyness and loneliness, whilst rivalry predicted low empathy. Our results suggest that the rivalry is between vulnerable narcissism and admiration, which supports its localization in the self-importance dimension of the narcissism spectrum model. It was concluded that whereas admiration and rivalry represent the bright and dark face of narcissism, vulnerable narcissism represents its blue face.

Keywords: admiration; personality; rivalry; self-esteem; vulnerable narcissism.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The graphical representation of the Narcissism Spectrum Model in which admiration and rivalry were assigned to the hypothesized dimensions (Krizan and Herlache, 2017).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Hypothesized relations between different faces of narcissism and personality metatraits.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Comparison of actual and simulated eigenvalues from parallel analysis. Blue = actual data; red = simulated data.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Coordinate system of personality metatraits in their relations to admiration, rivalry and vulnerable narcissism. The first value in brackets corresponds to the X-axis and the second to the Y-axis. ∗p < 0.01.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Latent profiles of individuals with different types of self-esteem. RSES = Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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