Looking into Communal Narcissism: Narcissistic Sanctity and Heroism

Abstract

In the current paper we introduce a new conceptualization of communal narcissism, as encompassed by two narcissistic strategies congruent with self-promotion and self-defensive motives. In addition, we posit that communal narcissistic strategies should be aligned with communal self-enhancement. Therefore, we propose narcissistic sanctity as an ego-boosting strategy and narcissistic heroism as an ego-defensive strategy. In a series of eleven studies (N = 5,606) we develop, validate, and employ what we will call the Narcissistic Sanctity and Heroism Concept. We found the scale to be a robust measure of communal narcissism and that the two postulated strategies are psychologically distinct while psychometrically sound. Specifically, we found that narcissistic sanctity was related to implicit and explicit communion, communal (but not agentic) self-enhancement and explained more socially (as compared to heroism) acceptable functioning in close relationships, being positively correlated with prosocialness via denying one’s egoistic motivations. Narcissistic heroism, on the other hand, was related both to agency and communion, it was unrelated to communal self-enhancement, explained less socially acceptable (as compared to sanctity) functioning in close relationships, and was related to less prosocialness via egoistic motivation. In sum, a newly proposed model of communal narcissism sheds new light on prior research on communal narcissism, explaining null relationships between communal self-presentation and actual behaviors in the communal domain.