Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Margarete ChubbuckPsy 492 Advanced general psychology

Argosy UniversityAugust 14, 2011

What is narcissism?

This is a personality disorder that involves people that are very arrogant and consumed with themselves

Healthy and unhealthy narcissismConscious and the unconscious

Diagnostic Statistical Manual Criteria

A great sense of self importance Dreams of unlimited success, power, beauty, or perfect

love Belief that they are special and unique Need for excessive admiration Sense of entitlement Will take advantage of others to achieve their own

ends Lack of empathy and failure to identify with the

feelings or needs of others Often envious and think others are envious of them Arrogant, haughty behavior

Communal and agentic domains

Positive views involving agentic domains but negative views involving communal domains

Agentic domains- status and intelligenceCommunal domains- kindness, morality,

interpersonal relationships

General consensus

Self absorbed Only care about themselves Can not maintain a healthy relationshipIs this really the truth or deep down inside

do narcissists dislike themselves?

Implicit associations test (IAT)

Self esteem measurement Categorizing words “like me” and “not like

me”Test takers rarely know they are being

assessed for self esteemAssociate “bad” words= low implicit self

esteemAssociate “good” word= high implicit self

esteem

Using communal words

Communal words refer to a connection between two people, as we know narcissists are not good at making those intimate connections therefore using communal words in the IAT will rate the implicit self esteem lower.

Conclusion

To conclude, narcissists have a very high rate of divorce and not being able to keep long term intimate relations with another persons, there are very self absorbed and thus far there in no certain cure for this personality disorder because it is hard to change the way someone perceives themselves and presents themselves to the world around them. There has been test conducted on this type of person to see what they really think about themselves but they are not all accurate because there is always the chance of false information from the person taking the assessment.

References

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Campbell, W. K., Bosson, J. K., Goheen, T. W., Lakey, C. E., & Kernis, M. H. (2007). Do narcissists dislike themselves "deep down inside?". Psychological Science, 18(3), 227-227-229.

Counts, R. M., & Sacks, A. (1991). Profiles of the divorce prone: The self involved narcissist. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 15(1-2), 51-51-74.

Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 392-392-414.

Finkel, E. J., Campbell, W. K., Buffardi, L. E., Kumashiro, M., & Rusbult, C. E. (2009). The metamorphosis of narcissus: Communal activation promotes relationship commitment among narcissists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(10), 1271-1271-1284. doi:10.1177/0146167209340904

References continued

Foster, Joshua, Shrira Iian (2008). The narcissus in all of us: Refelections on the self, personality, and what makes you, “you”. Psychology today.

Fourie, D. P. (2010). Look, but don't touch: Narcissist behavior and the conservation of ambivalence. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 23(2), 143-143-157.

Holtzman, N. S., Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2010). Sounds like a narcissist: Behavioral manifestations of narcissism in everyday life. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(4), 478-478-484.

Krizan, Z., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). Better than my loved ones: Social comparison tendencies among narcissists. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(2), 212-212-216.

MacDonald, Pat (2011). Narcissistic personality disorder. Medical office nursing, 16(3).

Mansi, A. (2009). Coaching the narcissist: How difficult can it be? Challenges for coaching psychologists.The Coaching Psychologist, 5(1), 22-22-25.

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). Portrait of a narcissist: Manifestations of narcissism in physical appearance. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(6), 1439-1439-1447.