Deep inside their unconscious level

Mar 9, 2007 08:23 GMT  ·  By

Tired of the megalomaniac nearby that claims he/she knows everything (even if all he pulls put of his mouth just bulls**t), he is the most intelligent (even if he has a child's brain), he looks gorgeous (even if he is a fat potato that looks twenty years older than he really is)?

Did you feel relieved when scientists said that narcissists have negative self views which are covered in their grandiose self-concept?

Well, a new research conducted by Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia and Jennifer Bosson at the University of South Florida reveals that, in fact, these persons are indeed not in their right mind as in fact they regard themselves the same on the outside as on the inside.

No wonder that constant contact with such a specimen leaves you bustling with resentment.

They may be in constant need for attention (in a group they won't let anybody but themselves speak, and even when they do, they don't listen) or they posses an unfounded sense of entitlement; but we attribute many times their shallow behavior to an unconscious self-loathing.

Previous researches suggested that narcissists' conscious self-views are balanced, being not uniformly positive: they regard themselves as being better than others in areas like status, dominance and intelligence (the agentic domains), but not in communal domains like kindness, morality, and emotional intimacy.

The researchers checked the link between narcissism and unconscious self-views in these agentic and communal domains: if they really have self negative image they should unconsciously dislike themselves equally from their intelligence to their level of intimacy in relationships. Narcissists, however, have positive unconscious self-views on the agentic (but not communal) domains.

An Implicit Association Test was employed to assess the subjects' underlying views on their self-esteem, agency and communion. This method records reaction times to computer-based word associations and the subjects were not aware that their self-esteem is being assessed during all this time.

The team found that narcissists do not uniformly dislike themselves "deep down inside": they displayed positive unconscious self-views in agentic domains and not in communal ones. Thus narcissists have a psychological condition: they are somewhat imbalanced at both conscious and unconscious levels.