Get in Touch With Your Hidden Narcissist How to make your implicit self-esteem work for you. (by Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D.) When we think of narcissism, we think of the clinical condition in which people show excessive levels of such qualities as self-love, grandiosity, and entitlement. Many true narcissists become enraged when other people fail to recognize and admire them because they expect that everyone thinks as highly of them as they do of themselves. However, some people with narcissistic personality disorder base their desire for attention on an overly low sense of self-esteem. Though the causes are different, the results are the same in that these individuals constantly seek attention, have overly shallow relationships, and exploit the people they know. Narcissism can stem from a number of sources, particularly when it’s of the non-pathological form. Egocentrism, the tendency to see things from your own point of view, can lead you to engage in narcissistic behaviors in which you develop blinders to the needs of other people. Apart from this cognitive distortion, we also have a biased tendency to value the things that are ours more than the things that belong to other people. This bias leads us to engage in the irrational behavior called the endowment effect in which you place greater value on things you already own than the things you don’t have in your possession. Experiments on buying and selling behavior show that people will demand a higher price from a buyer for, say a CD they already own, than they’re willing to pay to purchase the exact same CD to add it to their collection. This is an example of the more general mere ownership effect. We value the things we own because we see them as an extension of our own identity. The fact that we endow our possessions with greater value because they’re ours is just one example of everyday, healthy, narcissism. A little bit of self-love is good for our self-esteem. Loving the things we own is one form of this expression of healthy self-esteem. Often, we’re not even aware of just how much we hold these inherently positive views of ourselves. These unconscious views, known as implicit self-esteem, often differ radically from our explicit self-esteem, in which we state outright how we feel about ourselves. People may rate their self-esteem as average or even low on a standard self-rating questionnaire with questions such as “On the whole, I feel satisfied with myself.” However, their implicit self-esteem may reveal quite a different picture. For the average individual, we would assume that implicit and explicit self-esteem would be fairly strongly connected. However, some people may score much higher on the explicit than on the implicit self-esteem scale because they don’t want to, or can’t, acknowledge their feelings of inadequacy. Their high explicit self-esteem scores are due to their feelings of defensiveness, not due to a truly positive sense of self. For these individuals, we would expect their implicit self-esteem to be low and their explicit self-esteem to be high. Conversely, some people may score high on the implicit self-esteem measure but have low explicit self-esteem scores. For these individuals, their high intrinsic self-esteem may reflect an unduly high set of expectations for their ideal self. Their lower extrinsic self-esteem may be an expression of feelings that the reality of who they are doesn’t match the idea of who they would like to be. Our unconscious attraction toward the mere letters of our name supports the idea that each of us carries an inherent degree of narcissism. Whether or not we realize it, our self-esteem has a strong favorable grounding. However, it’s also important to adjust your implicit self-esteem so that it matches your explicit. Being too harsh on yourself (low implicit self-esteem) is as detrimental as shielding yourself from your limitations (high implicit self-esteem). Build a reasonable, but not excessive, narcissism into your personality and your self-esteem will flourish.
Posted on: Thu, 23 May 2013 12:38:54 +0000
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