Men mennesker med højt selvværd bekymrer sig ikke specielt om kritik.
Det er fordi inderst inde har narcissister ofte et mærkeligt forhold til selvværd, så de hader at blive kritiseret.
Enhver kritik vil sædvanligvis gøre dem aggressive.
Psykologer har målt selvværd, narcissisme og aggressiv adfærd hos 540 bachelorstuderende.
They found that the more narcissistic students tended to verbally lash out more when they were criticised.
The study's authors write:
"Narcissists mainly want to punish or defeat someone who has threatened their highly favorable views of themselves.People who had high self-esteem did not become more aggressive towards those who criticised them.
People who are preoccupied with validating a grandiose self-image apparently find criticism highly upsetting and lash out against the source of it."
Narcissists, meanwhile, find the threat to their ego too great.
The seeds of narcissism can be sown at a young age, said Professor Brad J. Bushman, the study's first author:
"...if kids begin to develop unrealistically optimistic opinions of themselves and those beliefs are constantly rejected by others, their feelings of self-love could make these kids potentially dangerous to those around them."If provoking the narcissist sounds dangerous, then another method of identifying the narcissist is simply to ask them.
Professor Bushman, speaking about a previous study, explained:
"People who are willing to admit they are more narcissistic than others probably actually are more narcissistic.
People who are narcissists are almost proud of the fact.
You can ask them directly because they don't see narcissism as a negative quality — they believe they are superior to other people and are fine with saying that publicly."
Kommentar: To a narcissist, their reality is the only one that exists. Even mild criticism and simple questions challenging the veracity of a narcissist's claims can be met with disproportional and sometimes outrageous responses. When you question them in this way, you are challenging the narcissist's need for control over the way other people think and behave. This doesn't always relate to self esteem because the ego of the pathological is distinctly different than that of normal or even psychologically wounded people. Unfortunately, many wounded people do adopt the traits and tendencies of pathological types. In fact, there is a whole movement that seeks such exploitation: the Social Justice Warriors.