Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how implicit and explicit self-esteem changes in the experience of failure in the narcissistic grandiosity group and the narcissistic vulnerability group, which are the phenotypes of pathological narcissism. In addition, according to the agency-communion model, people with high narcissistic grandiosity were divided into agency narcissism and communion narcissism according to the means to maintain their ideal self-image; the relationship between pathological narcissism and agency and communion was conducted. After the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) was administered to 303 university students, the narcissistic grandiosity group (n = 16), narcissistic vulnerability group (n = 15), and control group (n = 17) were selected. To measure implicit self-esteem, an implicit association test (Agency IAT, Communion IAT) consisting of each word of agency and communion was produced, and the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSES) was used to measure explicit self-esteem. After RSES and IAT, unsolvable anagram tasks were presented to induce failure experiences, and the degree of change in self-esteem was examined by repeatedly measuring RSES and IAT. As a result of the study, the direction of implicit self-esteem change was different according to the phenotype of pathological narcissism. In particular, the narcissistic grandiosity group showed a significant increase in the agency IAT, whereas the narcissistic vulnerability group significantly decreased in the communion IAT. It shows that the self-esteem of the pathological narcissistic group is unstable, while different phenotypes show different mechanisms for coping with failure experiences. This suggests that pathological narcissism is associated with agency and communion.