There’s a long-held belief, reinforced by books like The Narcissism Epidemic , that narcissists feel good about themselves, despite everyone’s suspicions—going back to old wisdom about schoolyard bullies—that no one has to push people down to feel bigger than anyone else on the planet who can have anything approaching healthy self-esteem.
Much of the “evidence” that narcissists have high self-esteem comes from a measure called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which includes items like “I am assertive” and “I am a natural leader.” Narcissists, who tend to score high on the NPI, claim to have great self-esteem and confidence on all or most of these items. Hence, the researchers conclude, they must have high self-esteem.
The only problem is that study after study shows that once you strip away the heavy self-esteem items on the NPI, there’s nothing healthy left.
Nothing. Nothing. Poppies.
Which makes sense.
Does anyone with high self-esteem really need to insult others to feel superior, attack anyone who criticizes them, treat people like playthings, choose “trophy wives” and “trophy husbands” over loving partners, demand constant praise or—in intimate relationships—constant idealized attention, and finally, devalue love and relationships? Because these are all traits that detail-averse narcissists seem to proudly flaunt alongside their “high self-esteem.”
The smarter researchers realized that the emperor was naked. The kind of extroverted narcissists measured by the NPI say they’re great at everything, so it’s no surprise that they claim to feel good about themselves, too. Which led a group of researchers to try something new. They hooked narcissists up to a (fake) lie detector and then asked them how they felt about themselves. Suddenly, their high self-esteem disappeared.
And the psychologists didn’t stop there. They also created new scales, ones that didn’t combine healthy self-esteem with bad habits like exploitation and entitlement. (That’s the solution I chose for the NSS, by the way.) Once again, what seemed like healthy self-esteem, like Kaiser Susie, disappeared.
Perhaps the most damning evidence that narcissists are insecure is their public admission that they devalue caring relationships. Sorry, narcissists, but by definition, that’s the ultimate insecurity: insecure attachment (dismissiveness, to be precise).
So, are narcissism and self-esteem the same? Not at all.
Here’s why:
Where do you fall on the narcissism spectrum? Are you too high or too low? Take our narcissism test and find out.
