Narcissists both love and hate themselves deep down.
For years and years, psychoanalytic thinkers (such as Freud) have argued that an inflated sense of self-worth (as in narcissism) reflects an underlying, unconscious self-loathing.
In a study published by W. Keith Campbell, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, and his colleagues, similar ideas were tested. Specifically, people were asked to rate themselves on instrumental and collectivist traits. Instrumental traits reflect perceptions of strength and ability, and collectivist traits include kindness, generosity, and cooperativeness. These traits were measured at both an implicit (unconscious, automatic) and an explicit (conscious, reflective) level. All participants were also given a scale to determine their level of narcissism.
Do narcissists hate themselves deep down, as Freud would have predicted? Well, the answer is yes—and no.
Not surprisingly, narcissists reported very positive perceptions of their functional traits. They also had positive implicit self-esteem for these functional traits. That is, on traits such as dominance and assertiveness, narcissists implicitly and explicitly scored higher than other people. So Freud was wrong about narcissists implicitly hating themselves.
However, Freud was right in one respect – narcissism has nothing to do with implicit self-esteem for communal traits (kindness and generosity). That is, narcissists do not, deep down, like themselves on these traits. Interestingly, narcissism also has nothing to do with explicit assessments of communal traits.
Taken together, these findings suggest that, contrary to what many might think, narcissists do not like themselves on all traits. They believe themselves to be strong and dominant, but not kind and generous. Moreover, these same attitudes exist on an implicit and automatic level.
Narcissists do love themselves – sort of — both at an implicit and explicit level.
