title: On self-aggrandizement and anger: a temporal analysis of narcissism and affective reactions to success and failure.
abstract: 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, leading 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 84112, USA. psyftr@psych.utah.edu
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rhodewalt
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Morf
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001076:Aptitude; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009289:Narcissism; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011889:Rage; D012649:Self Concept; D012647:Self-Assessment; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology