Sex differences in narcissism

Last updated

In gender studies, the analysis of gender differences in narcissism shows that male narcissism and female narcissism differ in a number of aspects.

Jeffrey Kluger, in his 2014 book The Narcissist Next Door suggested that our society, still largely patriarchal, is more likely to tolerate male narcissism and aggressiveness than these of females. [1] This assertion was voiced, although without definite proof, by a number of other researchers.

In 2015 a number of media outlets reported [1] [2] about a study at the University of Buffalo which analyzed 31 years of data of narcissism research and concluded that men consistently scored higher in the first two of three aspects of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory: leadership/authority, exploitative/entitlement, and grandiose/exhibitionism. [3] [4] The team leader of the research, Emily Grijalva, commented that on average this difference is slight (a one-quarter of a standard deviation) and there was almost no difference in the exhibitionism dimension (which covers such aspects as vanity, self-absorption and attention-seeking). She notices that a similar degree of difference is observed for other personality traits, e.g., slightly higher neuroticism for women or slightly higher risk-taking for men. [5] The reasons of reported gender difference were outside the scope of the study, however the authors speculated that it is rooted in historically established social conventions about what is acceptable for a particular gender and what are the traditional social roles for genders. [5]

A number of earlier studies (on smaller scales) reported similar bias. [6] A further indication for the trend was a 2008 finding that the lifetime narcissistic personality disorder is more prevalent for men (7.7%) than for women (4.8%). [7]

A 2023 comprehensive study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology measured gender differences in narcissism among a sample size of over 250,000 people, found that men scored higher in narcissism than women. [8]

Related Research Articles

In social psychology, an interpersonal relation describes a social association, connection, or affiliation between two or more persons. It overlaps significantly with the concept of social relations, which are the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences. Relations vary in degrees of intimacy, self-disclosure, duration, reciprocity, and power distribution. The main themes or trends of the interpersonal relations are: family, kinship, friendship, love, marriage, business, employment, clubs, neighborhoods, ethical values, support and solidarity. Interpersonal relations may be regulated by law, custom, or mutual agreement, and form the basis of social groups and societies. They appear when people communicate or act with each other within specific social contexts, and they thrive on equitable and reciprocal compromises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Narcissistic personality disorder</span> Personality disorder

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a diminished ability to empathize with other people's feelings. Narcissistic personality disorder is one of the sub-types of the broader category known as personality disorders. It is often comorbid with other mental disorders and associated with significant functional impairment and psychosocial disability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual fantasy</span> Class of mental image or pattern of thought

A sexual fantasy or erotic fantasy is an autoerotic mental image or pattern of thought that stirs a person's sexuality and can create or enhance sexual arousal. A sexual fantasy can be created by the person's imagination or memory, and may be triggered autonomously or by external stimulation such as erotic literature or pornography, a physical object, or sexual attraction to another person. Anything that may give rise to a sexual arousal may also produce a sexual fantasy, and sexual arousal may in turn give rise to fantasies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infidelity</span> Cheating, adultery, or having an affair

Infidelity is a violation of a couple's emotional and/or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, sexual jealousy, and rivalry.

Sociosexuality, sometimes called sociosexual orientation, is the individual difference in the willingness to engage in sexual activity outside of a committed relationship. Individuals who are more restricted sociosexually are less willing to engage in casual sex; they prefer greater love, commitment and emotional closeness before having sex with romantic partners. Individuals who are more unrestricted sociosexually are more willing to have casual sex and are more comfortable engaging in sex without love, commitment or closeness.

Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors. Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as mental health, cognitive abilities, personality, emotion, sexuality, friendship, and tendency towards aggression. Such variation may be innate, learned, or both. Modern research attempts to distinguish between these causes and to analyze any ethical concerns raised. Since behavior is a result of interactions between nature and nurture, researchers are interested in investigating how biology and environment interact to produce such differences, although this is often not possible.

Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology, sociobiology, or feminist studies. Despite the difficulty of interpreting them, crime statistics may provide a way to investigate such a relationship from a gender differences perspective. An observable difference in crime rates between men and women might be due to social and cultural factors, crimes going unreported, or to biological factors for example, testosterone or sociobiological theories). The nature or motive of the crime itself may also require consideration as a factor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual jealousy</span> Psychological concept

Sexual jealousy is a special form of jealousy in sexual relationships, based on suspected or imminent sexual infidelity. The concept is studied in the field of evolutionary psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Narcissism</span> Excessive preoccupation with oneself

Narcissism is a self–centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dark triad</span> Offensive personality types

The dark triad is a psychological theory of personality, first published by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002, that describes three notably offensive, but non-pathological personality types: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism, and sub-clinical psychopathy. Each of these personality types is called dark because each is considered to contain malevolent qualities.

Sexual fluidity is one or more changes in sexuality or sexual identity. Sexual orientation is stable and unchanging for the vast majority of people, but some research indicates that some people may experience change in their sexual orientation, and this is slightly more likely for women than for men. There is no scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy. Sexual identity can change throughout an individual's life, and does not have to align with biological sex, sexual behavior, or actual sexual orientation.

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) was developed in 1979 by Raskin and Hall, and since then, has become one of the most widely utilized personality measures for non-clinical levels of the trait narcissism. Since its initial development, the NPI has evolved from 220 items to the more commonly employed NPI-40 (1984) and NPI-16 (2006), as well as the novel NPI-1 inventory (2014). Derived from the DSM-III criteria for Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the NPI has been employed heavily by personality and social psychology researchers.

A narcissistic parent is a parent affected by narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder. Typically, narcissistic parents are exclusively and possessively close to their children and are threatened by their children's growing independence. This results in a pattern of narcissistic attachment, with the parent considering that the child exists solely to fulfill the parent's needs and wishes. A narcissistic parent will often try to control their children with threats and emotional abuse. Narcissistic parenting adversely affects the psychological development of children, affecting their reasoning and their emotional, ethical, and societal behaviors and attitudes. Personal boundaries are often disregarded with the goal of molding and manipulating the child to satisfy the parent's expectations.

Ambivalent sexism is a theoretical framework which posits that sexism has two sub-components: "hostile sexism" (HS) and "benevolent sexism" (BS). Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender. Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive, but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly. For the most part, psychologists have studied hostile forms of sexism. However, theorists using the theoretical framework of ambivalent sexism have found extensive empirical evidence for both varieties. The theory has largely been developed by social psychologists Peter Glick and Susan Fiske.

The women-are-wonderful effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with women when compared to men. This bias reflects an emotional bias toward women as a general case. The phrase was coined by Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic in 1994 after finding that both male and female participants tend to assign positive traits to women, with female participants showing a far more pronounced bias. Positive traits were assigned to men by participants of both genders, but to a far lesser degree.

In social psychology, collective narcissism is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by ideology, race, political beliefs/stance, religion, sexual orientation, social class, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. While the classic definition of narcissism focuses on the individual, collective narcissism extends this concept to similar excessively high opinions of a person's social group, and suggests that a group can function as a narcissistic entity.

Gendered sexuality is the way in which gender and sexuality are often viewed as likened constructs, whereby the role of gender in an individual's life is informed by and impacts others' perceptions of their sexuality. For example, both the male and female genders are subject to assumptions of heterosexuality. If a man were to behave in feminine ways, his heterosexuality would be doubted, and individuals may assume that he is gay.

In interpersonal relationships a fatal attraction is when the very qualities that draw one to someone eventually contribute to relational breakup.

Narcissism in the workplace involves the impact of narcissistic employees and managers in workplace settings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Machiavellianism (psychology)</span> Psychological trait

In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is the name of a personality trait construct characterized by interpersonal manipulation, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a strategic focus on self-interest. Psychologists Richard Christie and Florence Geis named the construct after Niccolò Machiavelli, as they used edited statements inspired by his works to study variations in human behaviors. Their Mach IV test, a 20-question, Likert-scale personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool and scale of the Machiavellianism construct. Those who score high on the scale are more likely to have a high level of manipulativeness, deceitfulness and a cynical, unemotional temperament.

References

  1. 1 2 Jeffrey Kluger, "Why Men Are More Narcissistic Than Women"
  2. "Proof at last: men really are bigger narcissists than women"
  3. "Study: Men tend to be more narcissistic than women", A University of Buffalo news release, March 4, 2015
  4. "Gender differences in narcissism: A meta-analytic review.", Grijalva, Emily; Newman, Daniel A.; Tay, Louis; Donnellan, M. Brent; Harms, P. D.; Robins, Richard W.; Yan, Taiyi, Psychological Bulletin , Vol 141(2), Mar 2015, 261-310. doi : 10.1037/a0038231 (article text available from DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
  5. 1 2 "Narcissism increases the chance you'll be seen as a leader, especially if you're a man", Emily Grijalva, Monday 9 March 2015, The Guardian
  6. Joshua D. Foster, W. Keith Campbell, Jean M. Twenge, "Individual differences in narcissism: Inflated self-views across the lifespan and around the world", Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 37, Issue 6, December 2003, Pages 469–486, doi : 10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00026-6. Quote: "The results suggest that (1) reported narcissism declines in older participants, (2) consistent with previous findings, males report being more narcissistic than females, (3) that ethnic differences in reported narcissism are generally comparable to those found in the self-esteem literature, and (4) that world region appears to exert influence on narcissism, with participants from more individualistic societies reporting more narcissism."
  7. Grijalva et al. (2015) citing Stinson, F. S., Dawson, D. A., Goldstein, R. B., Chou, S. P., Huang, B., Smith, S. M., . . .Grant, B. F. (2008). "Prevalence, correlates, disability, and comorbidity of DSM–IV narcissistic personality disorder: Results from the wave 2 national epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions". The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 69, 1033–1045. doi : 10.4088/JCP.v69n0701
  8. Weidmann, Rebekka; Chopik, William J.; Ackerman, Robert A.; Allroggen, Marc; Bianchi, Emily C.; Brecheen, Courtney; Campbell, W. Keith; Gerlach, Tanja M.; Geukes, Katharina; Grijalva, Emily; Grossmann, Igor; Hopwood, Christopher J.; Hutteman, Roos; Konrath, Sara; Küfner, Albrecht C. P. (June 2023). "Age and gender differences in narcissism: A comprehensive study across eight measures and over 250,000 participants". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 124 (6): 1277–1298. doi:10.1037/pspp0000463. ISSN   1939-1315. PMC   10188200 . PMID   37184962.

Further reading