Preferowanie sprawności i ignorowanie moralności jako wyraz narcystycznej regulacji obrazu Ja

Róża Bazińska , Krystyna Drat-Ruszczak , Marta Pałucha

Abstract

Three studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that behaviour of highly narcissistic people was characterised by emphasising competence and ignoring morality. Study 1 demonstrated that, alongside the increasing narcissism rating, the evaluation of one’s own competence increased, whereas the importance of morality decreased. Study 2 showed that the highly narcissistic participants tended to cheat more than those participants whose narcissism was low if an experimental manipulation provided a temptation. The highly narcissistic participants, then, claimed to have solved more problems than the other participants, even though the problems were in fact impossible to solve. The high positivity of the highly narcissistic participants’ self descriptions was independent of the experimental conditions or the traits’ connotations. The low narcissistic participants, on the other hand, evaluated better their own traits in the „temptation” condition and, independently of conditions, assessed themselves more positively in relation to morality but less positively where competence or neutral traits were concerned. Study 3 focused on interpretation (involving competence and morality) and evaluation of one’s own and others’ behaviours. The results demonstrated that the higher one’s narcissism, the higher the tendency to interpret one’s own and others’ behaviour as evidencing competence. The highly narcissistic participants also turned out to be much more lenient than the low narcissistic ones while assessing behaviours of the sin type, both from the actor’s and observer’s perspective. However, from the observer’s perspective, they evaluated more strictly than the low narcissistic participants behaviours of the virtuous failure type. In sum then, the results evidence narcissistic people’s preference for competence to morality, which manifests their willingness to dominate over others. The people tend to define and sustain the domination as an aspect of their competence rather than social morality. Thus, narcissistic people maintain the grandiose self- concept by being always effective and successful, though not necessarily honest.