Reducing narcissistic aggression by buttressing self-esteem: an experimental field study.
Narcissistic individuals are prone to become aggressive when their egos are threatened. We report a randomized field experiment that tested whether a social-psychological intervention designed to lessen the impact of ego threat reduces narcissistic aggression. A sample of 405 young adolescents (mean age = 13.9 years) were randomly assigned to complete either a short self-affirmation writing assignment (which allowed them to reflect on their personally important values) or a control writing assignment. We expected that the self-affirmation would temporarily attenuate the ego-protective motivations that normally drive narcissists' aggression. As expected, the self-affirmation writing assignment reduced narcissistic aggression for a period of a school week, that is, for a period up to 400 times the duration of the intervention itself. These results provide the first empirical demonstration that buttressing self-esteem (as opposed to boosting self-esteem) can be effective at reducing aggression in at-risk youth.
Thomaes
Sander
S
Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. s.thomaes@uu.nl
Bushman
Brad J
BJ
Orobio de Castro
Bram
B
Cohen
Geoffrey L
GL
Denissen
Jaap J A
JJ
D000293:Adolescent; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009289:Narcissism; D010379:Peer Group; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012649:Self Concept; D014956:Writing