Narcissism and romantic relationship: The mediating role of perception discrepancy

Abstract

The main purposes of this research are: a) to examine whether people's narcissism is related to their partners' relationship satisfaction and b) whether the link between narcissism and partner's satisfaction can be explained by the discrepancy in narcissists' perception about various aspects of their relationship. 150 (75 pairs romantic partner) university students from different universities in Hong Kong were conveniently invited to complete a password-protected online questionnaire. Their levels of narcissism, perception discrepancies for positive events and negative events, relationship satisfaction, and self-esteem were measured. It was found that narcissists have more times of romantic relationship and short relationship duration. Narcissists' partners were found less satisfied with their relationship. Bootstrapping mediation analysis controlling for self-esteem, age, and education background indicated that perception discrepancies for positive events mediated the relationship between narcissism and partner's relationship satisfaction while perception discrepancies for negative events did not. The current findings show that narcissists possessed large perception discrepancies in evaluating their own feelings and their partners'. Such discrepancies help explain why people's narcissism reduces the relationship satisfaction of their partners. The implications for personality and social psychology research and practice are discussed.