Rivalry and admiration-seeking in a social competition: From traits to behaviors through contextual cues.

To gain social status, humans employ two strategies, rivalry and admiration-seeking, and these strategies are over-expressed in trait narcissism, according to the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept (NARC) and the Status Pursuit in Narcissism (SPIN) model. Whether one engages in rivalry or admiration-seeking behaviors is thought to depend on the interaction between underlying traits and status-relevant social cues, with status threats encouraging rivalry and status-boosting experiences encouraging admiration-seeking. However, experimental studies of how traits and environment influence rivalry and admiration-seeking are lacking, and we do not know whether status-relevant cues selectively activate congruent traits (i.e., whether defeat primarily activates trait rivalry and victory, trait admiration-seeking). We used a rigged video game tournament with three randomized blocks with defeat manipulations of varying intensity, measuring behavioral rivalry (stealing points from opponents) and admiration-seeking (paying to boost rank in the tournament) in a sample of 434 undergraduates assessed for trait rivalry and trait admiration-seeking with the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire. We found trait-congruent main effects: behavioral rivalry scaled with trait rivalry and behavioral admiration-seeking with trait admiration-seeking. Exploratory analyses found modest support for trait × environment interactions wherein trait rivalry primarily increased status-pursuit behaviors following defeats and trait admiration-seeking following victories. However, these effects were not robust. These results support the NARC's two-dimensional conceptualization of narcissistic grandiosity. Future studies with greater within-subject power are needed to test the interactionist model of status pursuit. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychometric evaluation of a Visual Interpersonal Analog Scale.

Interpersonal theory organizes social behavior along dominant (vs. submissive) and warm (vs. cold) dimensions. There is a growing interest in assessing these behaviors in naturalistic settings to maximize ecological validity and to study dynamic social processes. Studies that have assessed interpersonal behavior in daily life have primarily relied on behavioral checklists. Although checklists have advantages, they are discrepant with techniques used to capture constructs typically assessed alongside warmth and dominance, such as affect, which typically rely on adjective descriptors. Further, these checklists are distinct from the methodologies used at the dispositional level, such as personality inventories, which rarely rely on behavioral checklists. The present study evaluates the psychometric performance of interpersonal adjectives presented on a visual analog scale in five different samples. Validity of the Visual Interpersonal Analog scale (VIAS) approach to momentary assessment was evaluated by comparing its performance with an interpersonal behavior checklist and by examining associations among the VIAS Warmth and Dominance scales and other momentary and dispositional constructs. Results were generally consistent with an existing interpersonal behavior checklist at the within-person level but diverged somewhat at the dispositional level. Across the five samples, the VIAS generally performed as hypothesized at both the within- and between-person levels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Real-world flexibility in adolescent girls' emotion regulation strategy selection: An investigation of strategy switching.

Adolescence is an important stage for the development of emotion regulation skills, especially for adolescent girls who are at elevated risk for the development of depression and anxiety. Although some emotion regulation strategies are more effective at helping adolescents regulate negative affect on average, research indicates strategy effectiveness varies with the context in which a strategy is deployed. Yet less work has been done examining which contextual factors are associated with adolescents switching emotion regulation strategies in their daily lives. This study examined individual and contextual factors related to negative interpersonal events that are associated with strategy effectiveness, including age, emotional intensity, perceived controllability, and co-regulatory support, and their association with adolescent emotion regulation strategy switching in daily life via ecological momentary assessment. Results indicated that adolescent girls differed in the degree to which they altered their emotion regulation strategies throughout their daily lives, and that switching strategies was associated with age as well as individual and within-person differences in perceived controllability, emotional intensity, and co-regulatory support. This study provides critical proof-of-concept of the utility of emotion regulation strategy switching as a measure of regulatory flexibility and highlights regulatory processes that may hold clues to the mechanisms of developmental psychopathology.

Antagonism in Daily Life: An Exploratory Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Interpersonal Antagonism is one of the major domains of maladaptive personality. Structural-based investigations of Antagonism have generally been consistent in highlighting the more specific antagonistic traits (e.g., manipulativeness, callousness) that underlie the broader domain. However, less work has attempted to merge structural and functional accounts of Antagonism to assess how specific antagonistic traits manifest in daily life. This exploratory study examined how Antagonism and its specific features relate to outcomes assessed using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods. Across four independent EMA samples (N range=297-396; total N = 1,365; observations per outcome=5,419-17,735), we investigated how antagonistic traits related to theoretically relevant, EMA-based outcomes (e.g., affect, empathy, coldness-warmth in interpersonal interactions). Results showed robust findings across samples and operationalizations of Antagonism (e.g., Antagonism's relation with negative affect), along with more mixed results (e.g., Antagonism's relation with different measures of empathy). We discuss future research directions for structural and functional accounts of Antagonism.

Leveraging economic games to integrate and differentiate personality and psychopathology.

A comprehensive model that integrates, yet differentiates, between personality and psychopathology is needed. Emerging empirical models of psychopathology are aligned structurally with trait models of personality, suggesting clear points of convergence. However, traits, themselves, are not sufficient to quantify consequential adaptivity and maladaptivity. Rather, as multiple theoretical accounts argue, unsuccessful pursuit of goals and needs, and the inability to flexibly adapt goals to fit the situation, is how maladaptivity is understood to emerge. Thus far, though, the empirical literature has suffered from an unsatisfactory connection between structural (or trait-based personality) models and our understanding of dysfunctional processes (psychopathology). Economic games, which elicit intensive repeated behavior suitable for studying dynamic processes, have been leveraged to explore how personality and pathology are associated with behavior across a variety of tasks. When coupled with computational modeling, economic games offer a promising method for integrating and differentiating personality and psychopathology. Ultimately, a fully formed model of psychopathology will be achieved when structural models of personality and psychopathology can be merged with a better understanding of the underlying functional processes of each. This will likely only be achieved by leveraging a number of available tools across disciplines.

Role of pregaming motives in accounting for links between maladaptive personality traits and drinking consequences.

College students are at heightened risk of engaging in unhealthy alcohol use that leads to negative consequences (e.g., motor vehicle accidents, poor academic performance). Understanding how individual differences, such as maladaptive personality traits, contribute to that risk could improve intervention efforts. A potential pathway through which personality confers risk for consequences is by influencing students' motivation to drink. In this study of 441 college students, we investigated whether different motivations to pregame, a particularly risky and common drinking practice on college campuses, accounts for links between maladaptive traits and alcohol-related consequences. Results of bivariate analyses showed that all pregaming motives and maladaptive traits (except detachment) were strongly correlated with negative consequences. In path analytic models that adjusted for shared variance between pregaming motives and between maladaptive traits, results showed that traits had indirect effects on total drinking consequences via individual differences in pregaming motives as well as direct effects that were independent of motives. Specifically, antagonism, disinhibition, and negative affectivity predicted more drinking consequences via stronger motives to pregame for instrumental reasons over and above the general motivation to pregame, whereas detachment predicted fewer consequences via weaker instrumental pregaming motives. Antagonism and disinhibition were also associated with more drinking consequences, and detachment with fewer consequences, over and above pregaming motives and general personality problems. Our study indicates that one way maladaptive personality traits may shape alcohol-related consequences in college students is by associations with their motivations to pregame. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A response surface analysis investigation of the effects of (mis)alignment between interpersonal values and efficacies on interpersonal problems.

OBJECTIVE: In this study we examined whether discrepancies between interpersonal values and interpersonal efficacies are associated with distress, and provide a framework through which similar questions regarding intrapersonal alignment may be investigated. METHOD: Using interpersonal circumplex scales, we assessed interpersonal values and efficacies in two large samples (undergraduate N = 1,453, community N = 1,099) and used response surface analysis to model the alignment of these variables and their association with interpersonal distress. RESULTS: We found that there were significant positive relationships between larger mismatches and greater distress. We also found that extremity in both matches and mismatches predicted more distress. At a more specific level, people who valued warmth but reported low efficacy for warm behavior reported problems related to being too cold to others. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the value of elaborating within-person discrepancies across personality levels, provides a model for doing so organized around the interpersonal circumplex, and specifies connections between value-efficacy discrepancies and interpersonal distress.

From scanners to cell phones: neural and real-world responses to social evaluation in adolescent girls.

While expanded use of neuroimaging seemed promising to elucidate typical and atypical elements of social sensitivity, in many ways progress in this space has stalled. This is in part due to a disconnection between neurobiological measurements and behavior outside of the laboratory. The present study uses a developmentally salient fMRI computer task and novel ecological momentary assessment protocol to examine whether early adolescent females (n = 76; ages 11-13) with greater neural reactivity to social rejection actually report greater emotional reactivity following negative interactions with peers in daily life. As hypothesized, associations were found between reactivity to perceived social threat in daily life and neural activity in threat-related brain regions, including the left amygdala and bilateral insula, to peer rejection relative to a control condition. Additionally, daily life reactivity to perceived social threat was associated with functional connectivity between the left amygdala and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during rejection feedback. Unexpectedly, daily life social threat reactivity was also related to heightened amygdala and insula activation to peer acceptance relative to a control condition. These findings may inform key brain-behavior associations supporting sensitivity to social evaluation in adolescence.

Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissistic States in Interpersonal Situations.

Clinicians have noted that narcissistic individuals fluctuate over time in their levels of grandiosity and vulnerability. However, these fluctuations remain poorly understood. Interpersonal theory asserts that interpersonal situations are central to the expression of personality and psychopathology, and therefore are a key context in which to understand the dynamic processes underlying narcissistic states. The present study is the first to examine narcissistic states assessed during interpersonal situations. Specifically, perceptions of others' warmth and dominance, momentary grandiosity and vulnerability, and one's own warm and dominant behavior were assessed across situations in daily life in a large sample (person N=286; occasion N=6,837). Results revealed that more grandiose individuals perceived others as colder and behaved in a more dominant and cold fashion, on average. But in the moment, relatively higher grandiosity was associated with perceiving others as warmer and more submissive and resulted in more dominant and warm behavior. On the other hand, trait vulnerability was associated with perceptions of coldness and cold behavior, and these effects were only amplified in momentary spikes of vulnerability. This study provides much-needed insight into the contexts that contribute to fluctuations in grandiosity and vulnerability.

Fluctuations in grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic states: A momentary perspective.

Theories of narcissism emphasize the dynamic processes within and between grandiosity and vulnerability. Research seeking to address this has either not studied grandiosity and vulnerability together or has used dispositional measures to assess what are considered to be momentary states. Emerging models of narcissism suggest grandiosity and vulnerability can further be differentiated into a three-factor structure-Exhibitionistic Grandiosity, Entitlement, and Vulnerability. Research in other areas of maladaptive personality (e.g., borderline personality disorder) has made headway in engaging data collection and analytic methods that are specifically meant to examine such questions. The present study took an exploratory approach to studying fluctuations within and between grandiose and vulnerable states. Fluctuations-operationalized as gross variability, instability, and lagged effects-were examined across three samples (two undergraduate and a community sample oversampled for narcissistic features; total person N = 862, total observation N = 36,631). Results suggest variability in narcissistic states from moment to moment is moderately associated with dispositional assessments of narcissism. Specifically, individuals who are dispositionally grandiose express both grandiosity and vulnerability, and vary in their overall levels of grandiosity and vulnerability over time. On the other hand, dispositionally vulnerable individuals tend to have high levels of vulnerability and low levels of grandiosity. Entitlement plays a key role in the processes that underlie narcissism and narcissistic processes appear unique to the construct and not reflective of broader psychological processes (e.g., self-esteem). Future research should consider using similar methods and statistical techniques on different timescales to study dynamics within narcissism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Predicting fluctuation in narcissistic states: An examination of the g-FLUX scale.

Studying dynamic patterns among grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic states has become an important area of inquiry. The g-FLUX (Oltmanns & Widiger, 2018) scale is a 9-item self-report measure designed to capture narcissistic dynamics in the absence of intensive longitudinal designs (e.g., ambulatory assessment, ecological momentary assessment). Though this scale has been associated with dispositional measures of narcissism, it has not yet been validated using ambulatory methods that can directly assess fluctuation in narcissistic states. The present study examined whether the g-FLUX scale predicts variability in state grandiosity and vulnerability across two samples: a community sample (N = 320) that was oversampled for low modesty and an independent undergraduate sample (N = 314). Results revealed that the g-FLUX scale predicts momentary variability in grandiosity and vulnerability. Results were stronger in the community sample. The study suggests that researchers should consider using the g-FLUX scale when interested in capturing dynamics within narcissism, especially when intensive longitudinal designs (e.g., ambulatory assessment methods) are not an option. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Pathological narcissism and psychosocial functioning.

Pathological narcissism involves maladaptive efforts to regulate the self and is conceptualized by 2 key features: narcissistic grandiosity and narcissistic vulnerability. Prior research has found that narcissism is associated with poorer functioning over the long term, especially interpersonal functioning. Despite this, the specific contributions of grandiosity and vulnerability to different domains of functioning remain understudied. In particular, there has been scant literature investigating pathological narcissism and its effects on functioning in large clinical samples. Understanding how grandiosity and vulnerability each contributes to dysfunction will help inform the conceptualization, prognosis, and treatment recommendations, alike, for narcissism. This study examined the relations between narcissism and different domains of dysfunction in a sample of 288 current or recent psychiatric outpatients. Results suggest that narcissistic grandiosity is associated with specific deficits in interpersonal functioning, whereas vulnerability is associated with all forms of dysfunction. However, after accounting for the shared variance in the predictors, vulnerability continues to be predictive of all forms of dysfunction, whereas grandiosity serves as a modest protective factor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A day in the life of Narcissus: Measuring narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability in daily life.

There is growing interest in understanding the fluctuations in grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic states over time. Momentary data collection is vital in facilitating this new area of inquiry. Two narcissism adjective scales, the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale and the Narcissistic Vulnerability Scale, have recently been developed for this purpose. In the present study, the validity of these 2 scales was examined across 3 different samples. Results indicate that these measures perform well psychometrically at both the momentary- and trait-level. Multilevel exploratory factor analyses reveal a clear 2-factor structure at both the within- and between-person level. Within-person correlations between these scales and other momentary scales (e.g., the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) are consistent with theoretical expectations. Finally, individual differences in endorsement of both of these scales correlated with other dispositional measures, including existing narcissism measures (e.g., The Pathological Narcissism Inventory and The Five Factor Narcissism Inventory), at the between-person level in the expected manner. We conclude these scales are well-suited for momentary narcissism assessment in studies wishing to examine fluctuations in grandiosity and vulnerability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Focusing personality assessment on the person: Modeling general, shared, and person specific processes in personality and psychopathology.

Personality and psychopathology are composed of dynamic and interactive processes among diverse psychological systems, manifesting over time and in response to an individual's natural environment. Ambulatory assessment techniques promise to revolutionize assessment practices by allowing access to the dynamic data necessary to study these processes directly. Assessing manifestations of personality and psychopathology naturalistically in an individual's own ecology allows for dynamic modeling of key behavioral processes. However, advances in dynamic data collection have highlighted the challenges of both fully understanding an individual (via idiographic models) and how s/he compares with others (as seen in nomothetic models). Methods are needed that can simultaneously model idiographic (i.e., person-specific) processes and nomothetic (i.e., general) structure from intensive longitudinal personality assessments. Here we present a method, group iterative multiple model estimation (GIMME) for simultaneously studying general, shared (i.e., in subgroups), and person-specific processes in intensive longitudinal behavioral data. We first provide an introduction to the GIMME method, followed by a demonstration of its use in a sample of individuals diagnosed with personality disorder who completed daily diaries over 100 consecutive days. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Multivariate Analysis of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory's Nomological Network.

The Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) has enjoyed widespread use in the study of the narcissism. However, questions have been raised about whether the PNI's grandiosity scale adequately captures narcissistic grandiosity as well as other popular measures do. Specifically, some have noted that PNI grandiosity shows a pattern of external associations that diverges from patterns for narcissistic grandiosity predicted by experts, and is more similar to the predictions for the vulnerability scale than is desirable. Previous research driving these critiques has relied on patterns of zero-order correlations to examine the nomological networks of these scales. The present study reexamines the nomological networks of PNI grandiosity and vulnerability scales using hierarchical regression. Results indicate that once accounting for overlapping variance of vulnerability and grandiosity, the unique variance in the PNI's grandiosity scale closely matches contemporary expert conceptualizations of narcissistic grandiosity based on expected associations with other personality variables.

Illuminating ipsative change in personality disorder and normal personality: A multimethod examination from a prospective longitudinal perspective.

Research suggests that both personality disorder (PD) and normal personality change as systems of variables (e.g., the general factor of PD), rather than as individual variables (e.g., neuroticism). Consequently, understanding PD and normal personality as multidimensional systems may yield additional insights over traditional single-variable approaches. Normal personality change has been attributed to increase across adaptive traits (i.e., the maturity principle), suggesting that shifts in the overall magnitude of construct expression plays a role in systemic change. We examined the extent to which total ipsative, system-level change was accounted for by shifts in the overall level of constructs (i.e., severity/maturity) as well as shifts in the configuration of PD and normal personality (i.e., style) across self-report and structured interview. Results demonstrated that overall change in PD and normal personality measured via self-report reflected both stylistic and severity change, whereas structured interview of PD primarily reflected shifts in profile severity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Development and validation of the Narcissistic Vulnerability Scale: An adjective rating scale.

There is an ongoing debate regarding the nature of narcissism such that some argue that narcissistic individuals oscillate between grandiose and vulnerable states, whereas others argue these dimensions are stable traits (e.g., grandiose individuals remain in grandiose states). Scales sensitive to fluctuations in narcissistic states are necessary to address this question. The current study (N = 1,613 across three samples) validates the newly developed Narcissistic Vulnerability Scale (NVS), a brief (11-item) adjective-based measure of vulnerable narcissism. Expert ratings were used for item selection. The NVS's factor structure was evaluated along with its correlations with measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, five-factor model traits, and self-esteem. A subset of NVS items were also evaluated using an ecological momentary assessment design. Results indicate the NVS is a unidimensional measure of vulnerable narcissism that could be used in either trait-oriented or state-oriented analyses, the latter of which may be particularly well suited to answering the most pressing questions in the study of narcissism. (PsycINFO Database Record

Issues resolved and unresolved in pathological narcissism.

Narcissism is one of the oldest personality constructs, and yet debates about its definition and structure have been a topic of intense debate over the past decade. Recent independent reviews of the literature have proposed conceptually identical triarchic structural models of individual differences in pathological narcissism. In each model entitlement serves as the core of the construct, and its expression is moderated by basic personality/temperament to manifest in exhibitionism or vulnerability. However, the clinical observation that individuals high in pathological narcissism vacillate between grandiose and vulnerable states remains understudied and poorly understood. We review the recent research that has driven the contentious debates, emerging points of consensus, and necessary future directions for research.