Climbing up or falling down: Narcissism predicts physiological sensitivity to social status in children and their parents

Abstract

From a young age, children are concerned about social status. Status indicates children's position within a social hierarchy (Anderson et al., 2015) and is often reflected in their popularity (i.e., social visibility, importance, and influence; Lease et al., 2002). Although the status motive is universal (Anderson et al., 2015), there might be individual differences in children's sensitivity to status gains and losses (McClelland, 1987). We propose that children's status sensitivity is positively associated with narcissism. We hypothesized that children with higher narcissism levels would show intensified positive and negative affective responsiveness to status gains and losses, and that so would their parents. We tested this idea in a randomized experiment, using facial electromyography (fEMG) to track

Affective contingencies of narcissism.

“…We propose that researchers should shift the focus from what narcissists generally feel to what determines how narcissists feel in any particular moment. This dovetails with dynamic models of narcissism (Back, 2018; Grapsas, Denissen, et al, 2020; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001) and personality (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Geukes, van Zalk, et al, 2017; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Morf, 2006; Wrzus & Roberts, 2017), which suggest that trait-like tendencies reflect frequently recurring states that emerge in person–environment transactions. For example, a recurring sense of having power might generate recurring states of increased pleasure in narcissists, which in turn might come across as an average tendency to experience positive affect.…”

“…On average, narcissists tend to experience positive emotions (see Czarna et al, 2018 for a review), yet findings show that they also experience emotional turmoil. Prior work has revealed, for example, that narcissists tend to show increased stress when under social evaluation (Brummelman, Nikolić, et al, 2018; Grapsas, Denissen, et al, 2020; Reinhard et al, 2012); are prone to experiencing shame, anger, and aggression in the face of failure (Denissen et al, 2018; Kjærvik & Bushman, 2021; Thomaes, Bushman, et al, 2008—but see Kirkpatrick et al, 2002); and show bouts of vulnerability (Edershile & Wright, 2020) and fluctuations in self-esteem based on the power they have in their daily lives (Geukes, Nestler, et al, 2017; Zeigler-Hill, Vrabel, et al, 2018). Our findings suggest that narcissists’ affect might oscillate depending on which of their social motives becomes satisfied or frustrated.…”

Can neuroscience help to understand narcissism? A systematic review of an emerging field

“…The author interprets this pattern of results as a more shallow processing in relation to biased attributions, but a greater responsiveness to evaluative information. Considered together with the studies reviewed above, this may be seen as supporting the picture of grandiose-narcissistic individuals displaying overly confident, hyporeactive responses when it comes to decision-making (Yang, Sedikides, Gu, Luo, Wang, & Cai, 2018) and attribution of success (Krusemark, 2009), alongside increased responsiveness to potentially self-relevant information (Grapsas et al, 2020;Krusemark, 2009).…”

“…Neurophysiological research on social exclusion in narcissism thus reveals involuntary stress reactions that might either not be reported, or also not be accessible to the narcissistic individuals themselves. Stronger physiological responses in response to social status threats can already be observed in children (Grapsas et al, 2020). Importantly, these reactions are not without social consequences, as report that those who are habitually high in grandiose narcissism and experience social rejection, as indicated by dACC activity, also display aggressive behavior toward others, as predicted by the threatened egotism model (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).…”

“…One study, however, did not find such an effect using RSA (Zhang et al, 2015). Of note, grandiose narcissism amplifies negative affective responses in face of ego threat even in children (Grapsas et al, 2020). While this research points to increased stress responses for individuals higher in narcissism in situations that are supposed to be threatening for most of us, further research shows that even stimuli that are not intrinsically threatening induce similar responses: Jauk, Benedek, and colleagues (2017) had extreme groups of individuals either high or low in grandiose narcissism perform a visual self-viewing paradigm during fMRI.…”