Heterogeneous High Self-Esteem and Narcissism Is Related to Aggression

Have you noticed that there is a group of people, who believe themselves to be outstanding and are narrow-minded? These people always want to get gain attentions badly, regardless of when and where, to get satisfied. You may know this kind of people in your life, but you may not know a fact about them—they are more aggressive than ordinary people.

A review published in the journal Advances in Psychology find that people who have high self-esteem and narcissism are more defensive and aggressive than ordinary people. Xuelian Qin, a researcher at Zhejiang Normal University, China, and colleagues reviewed plenty of literatures and discussed self-esteem, narcissism and aggression in details.

The researchers noted that compared with ordinary people, people of high self-esteem can predict other individual’s aggression behavior according to a certain kind of feelings. On the other hand, high self-esteem is related to stronger anger and hostility. The difference between people of high self-esteem and ordinary people not only lies on their extrinsic behavioral reactions, but also presents in cognitive strategies. Some representative strategies, including cognitive reappraisal, downward social comparison, prejudice and denial, help reduce the risk for the self-esteem of being further hurt, however, such defense makes the individuals of high self-esteem take actions indiscreetly when facing with threats and guide hostility and anger to the origin of threat and hence show highly aggressive behavior or similar misconducts.

In the study, the researchers conducted extensive experiments and found that population of strong narcissism appear to be more eager to be appreciated and complimented. If other individuals give negative evaluation on them, they will be upset and angry and in the meanwhile, a threat mode in their heart activates and starts to attack the origin that threatens their self-esteem–the potentially low confidence and the disordered self-perception tend to fluctuate self-esteem and in order to keep balance of self-esteem, the origin of threat must be attacked.

When facing with the challenge of negative social feedbacks, people of high self-esteem will feel ashamed greatly, and then switch this introverted shame to extrorse hostility; narcissistic people might breed anger when their authorities are being questioned.

In fact, excessive ego and self-protection are harmful to others. We should not choose one from self-esteem and narcissism and discard the other, instead, we should find a balance between the two. The researchers said: “Only self-esteem or narcissism can’t decide an individual’s behavior pattern and aggression, as an old psychological and behavior phenomenon, is closely connected to nature and upbringing. Self-esteem should be improved in upbringing, peer relation, and school education and we should try to prevent narcissism and high self-esteem before they hurt people around us.”