Demographic correlates of narcissism
Narcissism across gender and relationship status
To assess whether gender and other demographics affect the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder, Stinson et al. (2008) distilled insights from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, Wave 2—a huge dataset on the mental health disorders and demographics of individuals in the United States. Specifically, to generate this dataset, a representative sample of 34 653 individuals were interviewed. For example, to diagnose narcissistic personality disorder, individuals received a series of questions about how they feel or act in typical situations. The researchers then applied the DSM-IV criteria to diagnose narcissistic personality disorder as well as other personality disorders. As the data revealed
- 7.7% of men and 4.8% of women were diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder,
- this incidence was 5% in people who were married or cohabiting with a partner, 7.3% in people who had separated from a partner or widowed, and 9.5% in people who had never been married (Stintson et al., 2008).
Narcissism across age
Narcissism does tend to diminish as individuals age—as a meta-analysis, published by Orth et al. (2024), confirmed. Specifically, to conduct this meta-analysis, the researchers extracted data from 51 samples. These samples comprised over 37 000 participants in aggregate. The analysed examined three key facets of narcissism: agentic narcissism, antagonistic narcissism, and neurotic narcissism. All three facets diminished with age, although this decrease was large for neurotic narcissism and relatively small for agentic narcissism.
The researchers proposed a range of reasons to explain this decrease in narcissism over time. First, according to the social investment model of personality development, as Roberts et al. (2008) proposed, when individuals age, they gradually cultivate traits that are useful to the roles they assume. Typically, levels of agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness increase, because these traits are adaptive in many relevant circumstances. Narcissism—an inclination that tends to coincide with limited agreeableness, for example—should thus dissipate.
Second, according to the socioemotional selectivity theory—first proposed by Carstensen et al. (1999) but validated across many studies (for a review, see Carstensen & Mikels, 2005 and Moss & Wilson, 2017)—as people approach a transition, such as death, they prioritise close, personal relationships and emotional stability over the acquisition of knowledge, resources, and status. Narcissism, emanating from a pursuit of immediate status, should thus subside.
Third, according to the reality principle model, proposed by Foster et al. (2003), younger individuals, such as adolescents, are more likely to experience failures, rejections, and similar problems as they experience unfamiliar settings. This accrual of failures may diminish narcissism, as individuals become attuned to their limitations.
Narcissism across generations: Increases over time
As Orth et al. (2024) revealed, this pattern in which narcissism diminishes as individuals age is observed in all generations. Yet, narcissism also varies across the generations, consistent with generational cohort theory (e.g., Sessa et al., 2007).
To illustrate, in 2008, Twenge et al. undertook a technique called cross-temporal meta-analysis. In particular, these researchers examined scientific studies that have examined narcissism since the 1980s. These studies generally reported the average values of narcissism for various age groups. These figures were then subjected to statistical analyses to ascertain whether average levels of narcissism changed over time in specific age groups, usually undergraduate students.
This analysis revealed that narcissism has indeed increased over time in specific age groups. To illustrate, the average college student in 2006 generated a higher level of narcissism than 65% of college students in the 1980s. They were more likely to endorse items like “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to” (for a review, see Twenge & Campbell, 2008).
Several accounts may explain this increase in narcissism across generations, at least from the 1980s to the 2000s. For example, according to Twenge et al. (2010), many of the changes across generations might reflect a shift in the goals of individuals. That is, in the 1950s and 1960s, the priorities and activities of organisations did not shift rapidly. Therefore, individuals often worked at the same organisation, in a similar role, over many years. They maintained their relationships with colleagues, friends, and communities. Generations reared during these times, hence, often pursued goals that coincide with their underlying values, such as close relationships with friends and communities, called intrinsic goals.
In later decades, the priorities and activities of organisations often shifted rapidly and unexpectedly. Individuals would often need to shift their roles and compete to secure jobs. During this time, to compete successfully, they needed to boost their status. To achieve this objective, people needed to impress other people, called extrinsic goals, often manifesting as materialism. This pursuit of immediate status tends to amplify narcissism
Indeed, evidence indicate that younger generations in the 2000s were not as motivated to pursue intrinsic goals than younger generations in previous decades. Involvement in community groups had dissipated since the 1960s (Putnam, 2000). Interest in government activities had waned. Intimacy in friendships had also diminished; fewer people at this time felt they could readily confide in their closest friends (McPherson et al., 2006).
Narcissism across generations: Alternative perspectives
Some research has challenged the notion that narcissism has tended to escalate over recent decades—as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. For example, as Wetzel et al. (2017) suggest, interpretations of the items may vary across the decades. Several properties of the data are indicative of this possibility, such as
- changes in the number of subscales or factors of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory over the years,
- changes in item loadings—that is, relationships between each item and the corresponding factor—over the years,
- changes in the mean of each item, even after controlling the overall score.
Wetzel et al. (2017) did indeed uncover some evidence of these changes in the mean of some item, even after controlling the overall score. This finding implies that interpretations of this inventory may have shifted over time. The meaning of some item might have evolved.
Wetzel et al. (2017) also utilised a range of techniques, such as the partial-invariance model (see Robitzsch & Lüdtke, 2020), to control or to override the impact of this change over time. After this change was controlled, some facets of narcissism, such as vanity, entitlement, and need to be a leader, diminished from 1990 to 2019, contrary to previous observations.
Finally, Wetzel et al. (2017) suggested that changes in demographics across the generations—such as the proportion of participants who are Asian American or African American—could also have affected the observed shifts in narcissism over time. To illustrate, across the decades, vanity increased in Asian American students but decreased in other American students. Analyses that do not control race or ethnicity, therefore, may be biased.
Individual determinants of collective narcissism
A low self-esteem
Many researchers and scholars have ascribed collective narcissism—the tendency of some individuals to perceive their nation, community, or group as special and worthy of greater respect—to a low self-esteem (e.g., Adorno, 1997; Golec de Zavala et al., 2019). According to this reasoning, if people experience a low self-esteem, they feel unworthy, and they associate themselves with failure or insignificance. These associations tend to elicit unpleasant emotions. To overcome these unpleasant emotions, individuals attempt to define themselves by some collective—such as a nation, ethnicity, or community—and then attempt to perceive this collective as superior. Hence, they feel more worthy and significant, diminishing unpleasant emotions.
Although this rationale might seem plausible, in the first two decades of this century, research did not uncover significant relationships between collective narcissism and self-esteem (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009; Golec de Zavala et al., 2016). However, Golec de Zavala et al. (2020) later uncovered the reason that collective narcissism does not appear to be associated with self-esteem in empirical studies. Specifically, these authors proposed the model that appears in the following schematic.
This model differentiates collective narcissism and ingroup satisfaction. Specifically, whereas collective narcissism mainly coincides with derision of other communities, ingroup satisfaction primarily coincides with the feelings of pride individuals experience towards their own community. Collective narcissism and ingroup satisfaction are thus more indicative of outgroup hate and ingroup love, respectively. As this theory reveals,
- collective narcissism—emanating from an attempt to overcome feelings of insignificance or failure—should thus be associated with low self-esteem,
- yet, ingroup satisfaction, or the degree to which individuals perceive their community favourably, should be positively associated with self-esteem,
- similarly, collective narcissism, almost by definition, should coincide with the tendency to denigrate other communities,
- however, ingroup satisfaction tends to diminish this denigration of other communities perhaps because the group can foster a sense of resilience; so, other communities are not as likely to seem threatening,
- despite these disparities, collective narcissism and ingroup satisfaction both are indicative of favourable attitudes towards the group and thus should be positively associated with each other.
This model generates some testable hypotheses. Specifically
- the direct pathway between collective narcissism and self-esteem—that is relationship between collective narcissism and self-esteem after controlling ingroup satisfaction, as depicted by the purple arrows—should be negative,
- the indirect pathway between collective narcissism and self-esteem, as depicted by the grey arrows, should be positive,
- the direct pathway and indirect pathway may nullify each other, and hence the correlation between collective narcissism and self-esteem may approach zero—explaining past studies in this literature,
- similar arguments may apply to the association between collective narcissism and outgroup derogation.
Golec de Zavala et al. (2020) conducted a series of seven research studies that corroborate this model. These studies include correlational, longitudinal, and experimental designs. In most of these studies, participants, who were typically Polish or American, completed measures of
- collective narcissism, such as “My group deserves special treatment”,
- ingroup satisfaction, such as “I am glad to be Polish” (cf., Leach et al., 2008)
- self-esteem, and
- outgroup derogation, such as ““I would accept a Jewish person being my neighbour [reverse-scored] or measures of symbolic aggression, in which participant imagine a doll that represents another religion, such as Islam, and indicate the degree to which they would pierce this doll with a pin (Dewall et al., 2013).
In general, the results confirm the hypotheses. That is, collective narcissism was inversely related to self-esteem when ingroup satisfaction is controlled but not related to self-esteem when ingroup satisfaction is not controlled.