On self-aggrandizement and anger: A temporal analysis of narcissism and affective reactions to success and failure

Narcissists are thought to display extreme affective reactions to positive and negative information about the self. Two experiments were conducted in which high-and low-narcissistic individuals, as defined by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), completed a series of tasks in which they both succeeded and failed. After each task, participants made attributions for their performance and reported their moods. High-NPI participants responded with greater changes in anxiety, anger, and self-esteem. Low self-complexity was examined, but it neither mediated nor moderated affective responses. High-NPI participants tended to attribute initial success to ability, lending to more extreme anger responses and greater self-esteem reactivity to failure. A temporal sequence model linking self-attribution and emotion to narcissistic rage is discussed.