Abstract

This study investigated the longitudinal effects of self-enhancement motives, implicit and explicit narcissism on depressive mood. For this purpose, two types of narcissism as well as self-enhancement motives were measured among university students. In addition, the level of depressive mood was measured twice in one year intervals. The two types of narcissism and self-enhancement motives were assumed to be independent variables and were divided into two levels using a median-split method and the dependent variable was depressive mood which was adjusted by the same measure of one year ago. Three-way analysis of covariance demonstrated that depression over one year was higher when the level of enhancement motive was high. Also, depression increased along with enhancement motive or explicit narcissism when implicit narcissism was high. However, these results should be qualified by significant three-way interaction which confirmed our hypothesis that depression would be higher in condition of high level of enhancement motive when both of implicit and explicit narcissism were high. Finally, the results and implications of this study discussed with the stream of previous research.