As it turned out, the basis of this personality trait is not really love, but self-loathing.
Until now, it was not clear why narcissists demonstratively behave so unpleasantly — narcissistic, selfish, callous — that they cause negative feelings in other people. This type of behavior, called «flexing», manifested itself especially clearly in the era of social networks. This refers to the deliberate demonstration of one’s achievements, narcissism, flaunting one’s own superiority over others.
However, according to psychologists from New York University (USA), whose article According to the journal Personality and Individual Differences, narcissism is based not on inflated self-esteem and confidence in one’s own infallibility, but on the exact opposite — a sense of one’s own imperfection, vulnerability and insecurity.
With the help of «flexing» narcissists try to cope with these feelings, cover up and compensate for their low self-esteem.
This behavior provokes criticism from others, which makes narcissists feel even more disgusted with themselves, and begin to “show off” even more, which leads to the formation of a vicious cycle, the researchers explain.
The researchers drew their conclusions based on the analysis of the results of an online survey, which was attended by about 300 volunteers of both sexes, whose average age was 20 years. In total, participants answered 151 questions.
The goal of the researchers was to find out how the two subtypes of narcissism — «vulnerable» and «grandiose», that is, based on an unshakable sense of superiority over others — are related to each other, and another «dark» personality trait, psychopathy, which is also characterized by selfishness and egocentrism.
As a result, it turned out that such a type of behavior as «flexing» is characteristic only for people suffering from low self-esteem and feelings of guilt, but not for «grand» narcissists and not for psychopaths who are simply unfamiliar with such feelings. This led scientists to conclude that there is only one true type of narcissism — «vulnerable», which is characterized by feelings of insecurity and self-loathing. And so-called «grand» narcissism is just a form of psychopathy.