Grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism: state change in subjective well-being in face of envy

Abstract

The current study contrasted the two main conceptualizations of narcissistic personality (i.e. vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism) regarding their state changes in subjective well-being in reaction to envy priming. It was predicted that envy is a significant mediator between vulnerable narcissism and components of subjective well- being, but not of grandiose narcissism. A randomized controlled experimental designed was used to test on a sample of 199 young adults. Participants are randomly assigned to either read either a high status or neutral status fictitious profile, from which they engage in envy priming (n = 107) or neutral emotion (n = 92) respectively. The overall findings revealed that the changes in envious emotion are not dependent on vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism across envy primed condition and control condition. However, envy as evoked by fictitious profile reading is a highly significant predictor of lower subjective well-being. The results contradicts the psychoanalytic assumptions about the central role of envy in narcissism. It suggested that envy alone cannot fully explain the mechanism that causes the differences in the state change of subjective well-being among vulnerable and grandiose narcissists.