Narcissism, the key to success in liberal democracies?

Overview & Synopsis

In Western societies, the dominant liberal ideology promotes a normative model of the individual — liberal individualism — in which the person is expected to appear as the internal cause of their outcomes and to project a favorable self-image (Beauvois, 1994; Dubois & Leyens, 1994). Building on this, and on Camus's (2012) "know how to communicate" model, we questioned whether narcissism itself carries normative value. We hypothesized that both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism would be socially valued, on the two components of social value: social utility and social desirability. Using the self-presentation paradigm (Dompnier & Pansu, 2010), 143 participants (83% women; mean age 35) were assigned to a social-desirability (SD) or social-utility (SU) condition. Narcissism was measured three times under different instructions — honest self-evaluation, self-enhancement, and self-devaluation — using the SD3-fr (grandiose narcissism) and the ÉHSN (two dimensions of vulnerable narcissism). Control variables (gender, age, political orientation) were also collected. All Wilcoxon tests comparing the self-evaluation measure to the self-enhancement and self-devaluation measures were significant. To produce a positive self-image, participants markedly inflated grandiose traits under social-utility instructions, slightly inflated them under social-desirability instructions, and reduced vulnerable traits across all conditions. The data thus support a grandiose narcissism norm, anchored primarily in social utility, whereas vulnerable narcissism appears counter-normative. Given documented links between narcissism, authoritarianism (Ziegler et al., 2020) and conspiracy beliefs (Kay, 2021), the social valuation of grandiose narcissism may carry tangible political consequences.