The moralizing face of narcissism
I first heard about communal narcissism at a Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference many years ago. My advisor, Constantine Sedikides, said, “I have a young man I want to introduce you to. He has a new idea about narcissism.” I thought, great—new ideas are always interesting—and so I met Jochen Gebauer.
Jochen’s argument was simple but clever. My own take on narcissism, which goes back to Freud and his work on libidinal types, is that it has to do with agency. By agency I mean traits like dominance, power, intelligence, control, and leadership. In research on grandiose narcissism, you’d see exaggerated views of one’s intelligence, attractiveness, and leadership ability, as well as aggression and defensiveness when those views were challenged. What you didn’t see with narcissism was ego inflation in communal domains like kindness, compassion, or caring. The guy showing me his vintage stainless/gold Rolex Submariner with the blue face is not telling me about his charity work at the soup kitchen at the same time.
Back in graduate school, I worked with Constantine and friend Erich Rudich on a study comparing grandiose narcissism and self-esteem. One of the key differences we identified was this: self-esteem tended to reflect a balance of positive feelings about oneself. Someone high in self-esteem might say, “I’m a pretty good friend, I’m pretty smart, I’m pretty attractive, I’m a decent leader.” Narcissism, on the other hand, put all the eggs in the leadership and power basket. Narcissists weren’t telling themselves they were good friends or unusually kind. They were telling themselves they were superior, dominant, and more capable than others. That is, agentic.
Well, Jochen rotated this script ninety degrees. He thought: what if someone put all their eggs in the communal basket? In that case, narcissism would look like: “I am the most moral person ever. I’m the best friend you’ve ever met. I care more about people than you do. I’m the kindest, most compassionate person alive.”
As soon as I heard this, I thought, oh man—that makes perfect sense. Theoretically it was elegant. You just spin the axis of the circumplex model. Instead of narcissism being centered on agency, it could be centered on communion. And immediately an image popped into my head: Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” on Saturday Night Live. The sanctimonious “isn’t that special” voice of exaggerated moral superiority. Communal narcissism, in that sense, is the moralizing face of narcissism, better suited for a church picnic than a nightclub.
One of the first steps in understanding a new psychological construct is to build an assessment tool. Gebauer and colleagues introduced the Communal Narcissism Inventory (CNI), which asked people to rate themselves on statements like “I am the most helpful person I know,” “I will be well known for the good deeds I will have done,” “I am the most caring person in my social surrounding”, or “I am the best friend someone can have.”
You can see immediately the narcissistic flavor in the questions—it’s not just “I try to help people” but “I am the most helpful.” And the behavioral data showed that high scores on communal narcissism were associated with greater self-enhancement on more communal traits. For example, communal narcissists see themselves as better-than-average on more communal (but not agentic) traits, and claim false knowledge about communal information.
The difference between communal and classic grandiose narcissism is clear when looking at the correlations with self-reported Big Five or OCEAN traits. The figure below (source: me from data in Gebauer et al., 2012) shows the clean distinction between the two forms of narcissism on the traits of extraversion (higher in grandiose narcissism; extraversion captures much of agency) and agreeableness (higher in communal narcissism; agreeableness captures much of communion).
Communal narcissists think they are kind—you can see it in the CNI scale and the Big Five data—but do others see them the same way? The answer seems to be: not really. When the researchers used a round robin design—basically you have small groups of people rate themselves and each other—they found a gap between the kindness reported by communal narcissists and the kindness observed by others. Communal narcissists appeared to overestimate how communal they were when compared to how they appeared to others. Peers and observers didn’t see them as especially moral or especially kind. This discrepancy is a hallmark of narcissism in general: the self-concept is inflated in ways that others don’t fully endorse.
Follow-up research asked the obvious question: are communal narcissists actually more prosocial? Do they behave in more helpful or caring ways, or is it mostly talk? A 2019 set of studies compared subjective and objective prosociality. Subjectively, communal narcissists reported being highly prosocial. They believed they did more for others, cared more deeply, and acted more morally. Objectively, the evidence for this goodness was thin. In many cases, communal narcissists’ actual behavior didn’t match their claims. They weren’t necessarily more helpful when no one was watching. But they were more likely to display generosity when an audience was present and there was an opportunity for recognition. To quote the paper: “Agentic narcissism was related to lower objective prosociality and lower subjective prosociality. Communal narcissism, by contrast, was unrelated to objective prosociality, but was related to higher subjective prosociality.”
So where does pathology come in? A few studies have tried to distinguish between “normal” and “pathological” communal narcissism. The normal form of communal narcissism includes inflated self-views in the communal domain, but not necessarily severe dysfunction. The pathological form would presumably involve more attention seeking for communal behaviors, elevated and rigid morals, more public self-sacrificing behavior, and presenting oneself as a victim or martyr to manipulate and control others. The empirical literature is still forming around this question. Researchers are using some subscales from the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) along with the CNI to try to capture pathological communal narcissism. You do find higher levels of neuroticism associated with pathological communal narcissism, and my guess is more toxic behavior.
This leads to some interesting implications. In daily life, communal narcissists might be the friends or colleagues who constantly tell you how much they do for others, how much they sacrifice, how much they care. They may position themselves as moral leaders in a group, always ready to declare what the right course of action is. They may shame others for not being compassionate enough.
But even though communal narcissists might be wearing the cloak of compassion, the underlying psychology is narcissistic—the self is inflated and needs validation and affirmation—but the domain of affirmation has shifted. Instead of competing on power and status, communal narcissists compete on kindness and morality.
Bottom line: communal narcissism is an interesting spin on classic narcissism. Being a new construct, I think it needs further work to map it out, especially on the more pathological end of the continuum. Communal narcissism is tricky, because it involves turning caring or compassionate spaces into competitive spaces; a narcissistic running back doing a dance after scoring a touchdown makes sense, but a priest or pastor bragging about his good works is a little weird, hence the humor of the Church Lady skit came from the tension of intense ego and aggression wrapped in Christian morality. I also don’t see communal narcissism as quite as socially toxic or dangerous as the more agentic forms. My concern with narcissism is primarily with the grandiose forms, because those individuals tend to gain social power which magnifies their potential for damage. But communal narcissism damages relationships and groups—especially groups in the business of doing good—and that can be a real problem as well.
Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., Verplanken, B., & Maio, G. R. (2012). Communal narcissism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(5), 854–878. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029629
Campbell, W. K., Rudich, E. A., & Sedikides, C. (2002). Narcissism, self-esteem, and the positivity of self-views: Two portraits of self-love. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 28(3), 358-368.
Nehrlich, A. D., Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., & Schoel, C. (2019). Agentic and communal narcissism and subjective versus objective prosociality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(6), 671–680. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618785162
Żemojtel-Piotrowska, M., Rogoza, R., & Włodarczyk, A. (2018). Normal and pathological communal narcissism in relation to personality traits and values. Personality and Individual Differences, 129, 88–93.
Rogoza, R., & Fatfouta, R. (2019). Normal and pathological communal narcissism in relation to personality traits and values. Personality and Individual Differences, 140, 76-81.
