The link between narcissism and aggression: a meta-analytic review.
Kjærvik, SL, and Bushman, BJ (2021). The link between narcissism and aggression: a meta-analytic review. Psychology Bulletin. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000323
Commentary
This study investigated the link between narcissism and aggression and whether it is more emphasized under provocative conditions.
This meta-analysis review analyzed 123,043 participants, from a total of 437 independent studies.
Results showed that narcissism was associated with both aggression (r = .26, [. 24, .28]) and violence (r = .23, [. 18, .27]), and as expected the link between narcissism and aggression was more pronounced in the provocation condition (r = .29) than in the no provocation condition (r = .12, [. 05, .18]). The link between narcissism and aggression was stronger in the provocation condition (r = .29, [23, .36]) than in the no provocation condition (r = .12, [05, .18]).
All three aspects of narcissism were also associated with aggression, as both "normal" and "pathological" narcissism were associated with aggression.
The three aspects of narcissism are entitlement, grandiosity, and vulnerability.
Narcissism is a function of all forms of aggression (i.e., indirect, direct, replacement, physical, verbal, bullying) and both forms of aggression (i.e., reactive and proactive).
And narcissism and aggression are important for men and women, people of all ages, students and non-students, and people in individualistic and collectivistic countries. Significant results were obtained in experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies, published and unpublished studies, and studies that assessed aggression using various types of measures (i.e., self-report, other-report, observation).
Overall, the results were robust to publication bias and the presence of outliers.
These results show that provocation is an important moderator of the link between narcissism and aggression, and that people with high narcissism have "thin skin" and tend to be more aggressive when provoked.
