Narcissism’s Effect on Regulatory Processes in Interpersonal Situations

The current study examines how narcissism is associated with (dys)regulation and the corresponding interpersonal situations likely to set the dynamic (dys)regulatory processes in motion. To replicate and extend findings from Wright et al., 2017, we examined, in four samples with preregistered analyses (total person: N =1,022; total observation: n= 35,975), whether narcissism amplifies the link between perceptions of the interacting partner’s behavior and one’s own negative emotions. Results were somewhat variable across samples and measures of narcissism. The most consistent findings showed that narcissism amplified the link between perceiving the interacting partner as dominant and one’s own negative affect (partial replication of Wright et al., 2017). We also found that narcissism amplified the link between perceiving the interacting partner as cold and one’s own negative affect. Both narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability played a role in these findings, but when controlling for the shared variance in each, it was narcissistic vulnerability that played a unique role in these effects. These results suggest that people who are perceived as interpersonally dominant and/or cold pose a threat to narcissistic goals and that such a threat is likely to lead to increases in negative affect for people high in narcissism (particularly people high in narcissistic vulnerability). Points of convergence and divergence with findings from Wright et al. (2017) are discussed as are similarities and differences across samples within the study. The current study elucidates important future directions for examining the social contexts likely to lead to dysregulation in individuals high in narcissism.