Key points
“Partner enhancement” is the tendency to perceive a romantic partner as better than oneself.
Individuals high in narcissism showed little partner enhancement at all stages of a relationship.
People high in narcissism showed little partner enhancement at all stages of a relationship.
Instead, people high in narcissism indulged in self-enhancement.
A new study published in the Journal of Personality Research suggests that one reason it’s hard to have a healthy relationship with a narcissist is their inability to show partner enhancement (i.e., the tendency to perceive a romantic partner as better than oneself).
Psychologists Anna Zarna and Magdalena Smega of the Jagiellonian University in Poland explain the inspiration for their research:
We observed several couples where both partners seemed to be working in the same field and wondered how they dealt with competition with each other, how they avoided the pitfalls of comparisons with each other, and how such comparisons affected their relationships. Some couples seemed perfectly capable of performing this balancing act and maintaining very high views of self, partner, and respect for each other while others were not.
To explore why this was the case, Czarna and Śmieja conducted a series of surveys that measured couples’ self-esteem, narcissism, partner enhancement, relationship duration, and relationship quality. Three main findings emerged:
Individuals low in narcissism enhanced their partners early but not later in their relationships.
Individuals high in narcissism showed little partner enhancement throughout all stages of the relationship.
Instead, high narcissists indulged in self-enhancement.
Benefits of Partner Enhancement
According to the researchers, partner enhancement contributes significantly to the health and longevity of a romantic relationship in the following ways:
Coping more effectively with conflict
Less use of negative communication
Tendency to have higher levels of commitment
They explained that
Partner enhancement appears to act as a kind of “vaccination” against less favorable interpretations of a partner’s behavior in conflict situations. It may prevent a partner’s intentions from being perceived as bad or malicious. Instead, those who enhance their partners are more likely to attribute their partner’s actions more positively.
In the case of narcissists, the researchers suggest that self-enhancement trumps partner enhancement:
Highly narcissistic individuals are addicted to self-esteem. They crave ego boosts and use every opportunity to get them. Their constant desire for self-enhancement makes it difficult to refrain from it in close, intimate relationships. Most importantly, they tend to attach higher value to agency, personal accomplishments, and success than to connection and relationship well-being.
Gender Effect
The researchers also found an unexpected gender effect: Male narcissists seemed to be particularly enhanced by their female partners:
Women tended to perceive their highly narcissistic male partners as superior to them. This finding may play into popular psychology (“women like bad boys”) as well as common stereotypes about male narcissists being attractive, popular, and viewed favorably by their female admirers.
However, the researchers emphasize that the effects were short-lived; male narcissists become disliked and their socially disturbing traits such as selfishness, deceit, and exploitation are noted.
In the future, Czarna and Śmieja would like to explore which aspects or “flavors” of narcissism play the biggest role in relationship outcomes.
“Building on this knowledge is a necessary step in designing future interventions that could be useful in couples counseling,” they conclude.
