Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self‐Worth in the Ingroup’s Image

By Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Karolina Dyduch-Hazar, Dorottya Lantos. Political Psychology, 2019

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This article proposes a new theoretical framework for the reviewed state-of-the-art research on collective narcissism—the belief that the ingroup’s exceptionality is not sufficiently appreciated by others. Collective narcissism is motivated by the investment of an undermined sense of self-esteem into the belief in the ingroup’s entitlement to privilege. Collective narcissism lies in the heart of populist rhetoric. The belief in ingroup’s exceptionality compensates the undermined sense of self-worth, leaving collective narcissists hypervigilant to signs of threat to the ingroup’s position. People endorsing the collective narcissistic belief are prone to biased perceptions of intergroup situations and to conspiratorial thinking. They retaliate to imagined provocations against the ingroup but sometimes overlook real threats. They are prejudiced and hostile. Deficits in emotional regulation, hostile attribution bias, and vindictiveness lie behind the robust link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility. Interventions that support the regulation of negative emotions, such as experiencing self-transcendent emotions, decrease the link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility and offer further insights into the nature of collective narcissism. This suggests that deficits in the ability to regulate negative emotions may be associated with likelihood to uphold the collective narcissist belief about the ingroup and intergroup hostility. This conclusion is further supported by results indicating that collective narcissism is associated with low self-esteem and vulnerable narcissism, characterized by the resentment for lack of external recognition of personal entitlements. Collective narcissism mediates the link between low self-esteem and outgroup derogation.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Sociology and Political Science, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b19dc9c440dbca13d0f73faa5657a40bd241789a