Hypersensitive narcissism explains trying to downvote research and neutral feedback
https://lima.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2023/06/Freis%2C%20Brown%2C%20Carroll%2C%20Arkin-SCP.pdf
Crossposting audience: This is a new subreddit at , the first anti-narcissism subreddit based on scientific evidence as far as I can tell. Please give us a follow at the original sub! We are new and growing.
I had a conversation with a muted and banned user who had questions how I identified their narcissistic rage. Here we are going into it. It is based on equivalent cognitions to HSNS (hypersensitive narcissism scale). This scale shows problems accepting feedback, usually of any valence (positive or negative). No matter if they get agreement or disagreement, hypersensitive narcissists emit negative, antisocial valences. They do show response though, which differentiates them from strict antisocials.
Feedback can cause shame or rage, sometimes even when positive in the case of hypersensitive narcissists. This paper studies shame and rage (narcissistic rage) when receiving feedback. Usually people don't take to heart feedback that is just meant to hurt, is useless, or otherwise has no actual value. Narcissistic rage is when this same feedback that doesn't bother overs results in extreme rage and shame for a hypersensitive narcissist. It often takes only one comment to trigger it, and the result is unbelievable.
" This feedback can often lead to a range of emotional reactions, such as shame or anger, after receiving negative or positive feedback. Some individuals place greater or lesser value on this external information and cope with these emotions more or less effectively. "
Entitled, hostile and arrogant is often how the grandiose narcissist is described. They can also be a hypersensitive narcissist.
" In addition, narcissism can be divided into two subtypes: grandiose and vulnerable (e.g., Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Wink, 1991). Grandiose narcissism is marked by explicit self-absorption, arrogance, high self-esteem, entitlement, and interpersonal hostility (Emmons, 1987; Miller et al., 2011; Raskin & Terry, 1988). This work aims to elucidate the subjective experiences of the lesser known subtype, vulnerable narcissism. "
Vulnerable narcissists are aggressive, exploitative, and harbor grandiose thoughts that they don't speak on very much.
" Vulnerable narcissists are self-absorbed, exploitative, aggressive, and harbor grandiose thoughts, much like grandiose narcissists (Krizan & Johar, 2012, 2014; Miller et al., 2011; Zeigler-Hill, Green, Arnau, Sisemore, & Myers, 2011) "
As described in earlier research, vulnerable narcissists ruminate over outcomes they don't think were fair or deserved, showing an almost disturbing obsession with an unfavorable outcome, even if the actual incident was just minutes, or even seconds.
" Vulnerable narcissists report that they become more upset or angry when they do not receive what they think they deserve. Thus, vulnerable narcissists are much more sensitive to judgments of outcome fairness, ruminating over the outcomes they did not get but believe they deserved."
Vulnerable narcissists don't have a strong sense of self and rely on hearing from others that they are good to feel safe.
" Vulnerable narcissists also experience uncertainty about their internal experiences, including their attitudes, beliefs, and selfevaluations (Wink, 1991). This self-doubt leads to hypersensitivity toward external feedback. In particular, vulnerable narcissists are highly sensitive to social evaluation (Hendin & Cheek, 1997) and base their self-worth in externally validated domains, including othersā approval (Zeigler-Hill, Clark, & Pickard, 2008). "
Vulnerable narcissists show a propensity for greed which they can't actually hold onto, and need approval and self-regulation to hold onto their sense of self. This is NOT to say people are not entitled to human rights. We are talking about greed, which is excess of a standard and popularly acceptable quality of life.
" This creates a paradox in vulnerable narcissism that does not exist in grandiose narcissism. Vulnerable narcissistsā entitlement leads them to think deep down that āI deserve more!ā but then they doubt this sentiment, consequently turning to other individuals for assistance with self-regulation and approval."
The hypersensitivity of vulnerable narcissists causes them to feel negative no matter whether the feedback is good or bad due to everything feeling like it is in terms of the self.
" In other words, vulnerable narcissistsā egocentric and hypersensitive nature creates psychological distress and lowered self-acceptance that sets them up for disappointment and a damaging emotional life. "
Vulnerable narcissists harbor entitled beliefs about others. These are in excess of a standard and popularly acceptable quality of human behavior, such as in excess of the law but the law is not the only delimiter, especially when its enforcement is broken. These people may expect relationships, mommying, domming or subbing from people NOT interested in that.
" According to theory (Pincus et al., 2009), vulnerable narcissists harbor entitled beliefs and expectations of themselves and others, but do not adequately express those expectations. When others fail to live up to these entitled beliefs, vulnerable narcissists experience anger (or entitlement rage) as they attempt to cope with the disappointment. This can be followed by shame. Some researchers propose that shame arises in vulnerable narcissists over the recognition of their dependence on others (Pincus et al., 2009) "
Narcissistic rage is explicitly when a negative interpersonal interaction results in hurting or harming someone else instead of being internalized and PRIVATELY processed. This includes boundary violations, entitlement to violate those boundaries, up to rape and homicide. This is contrast to shame which just processes these internally.
" . Shame is elicited when an individual attributes the cause of a negative event to internal factors (e.g., Bosson & Prewitt-Freilino, 2007; Tracy & Robins, 2004) while anger allows a person to externalize threats and protect their sense of self (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Krizan & Johar, 2012, 2014; Miller et al., 2011). "
Vulnerable narcissists reported negative mood when they even received POSITIVE feedback.
"Hill (2011), participants who scored high on vulnerable narcissism reported a significantly greater negative mood state, particularly shame, after receiving positive feedback."
Vulnerable narcissists feel entitled to positive feedback. That is fine, as long as they are not ignoring valid points on why they didn't receive it. If they're not adapting to valid points, that's when the narcissism becomes pathological.
"On one hand, due to vulnerable narcissistsā hypersensitive and entitled nature, we expect unsatisfactory feedback to produce the most emotional turmoil, evidenced by reported shame and anger, as a function of self-regard."
Highly sensitive narcissists report more shame after receiving negative feedback when they believe they wrote a high quality essay. This isn't to say people more on the norm didn't feel shame, it's to say that highly sensitive narcissists felt more.
"Particularly, those who scored high on the HSNS reported significantly more shame after receiving negative, rather than satisfactory, feedback if they believed they wrote a high quality essay, b = .73, SE = .33, t(69) = 2.23, p < .05."
They also expressed more anger.
"Specifically, similar to shame, high HSNS participants reported significantly more anger after receiving negative, compared to satisfactory, feedback if they believed they wrote a high quality essay, b = .58, SE = .19, t(69) = 2.99, p < .01."
Interestingly highly sensitive narcissists showed more anger when they wrote a low quality essay and received positive reviews for it, showing that they may also interpret everything egocentrically again, like rage that they were being pitied, instead of raged that they were being shorted.
". In contrast to shame, however, high HSNS participants who believed they wrote a low quality essay reported more anger after receiving satisfactory feedback, b = -.77, SE = .19, t(69) = -2.52, p < .01. These effects also cannot simply be explained by self-esteem. When controlling for self-esteem, the 3-way interaction between the HSNS, essay quality, and feedback type remains significant in predicting anger, b = 1.08, SE = .31, t(68) = 3.48, p <.001."
Highly sensitive narcissists pretended to not care about the judge's feedback but still would try to get the truth about what they really thought, often in nefarious and inappropriate ways that they often kept plausibly deniable. Alternatively, people low on the HSNS scale would simply take away the value of nefarious feedback that did not seem to be correct. They also did not delegitimate legitimate feedback of actual value due to being highly sensitive. They were able to take truly valuable feedback, even if it was negative. It was only when it was nefarious they discredited it. HSNs, alternatively, discredited truly valuable feedback simply because it was negative.
". Specifically, we used participantsā ratings of concern with what the judges thought of them. This served to operationalize a potential emotion regulation tactic whereby participants could defensively minimize feedback importance."
Narcissists and non-narcissists even if they didn't actually care about the judges still showed signs of disliking negative feedback on what they considered to be good work. However, non-narcissists were more able to discredit a nefarious judge showing many narcissists do not have a strong sense of self outside of others, and it has a lot of coincidence with dependent personality disorder.
"Participantsā lower concern for what the judges think of them led to no difference in reported shame for those who rated their essay quality as low, regardless of their standing on the HSNS; low HSNS, b = -.12, BootSE = .13, 95% BootCI [-.40, .15], high HSNS, b = -.125, 95% BootCI [-.64, .03]."
Narcissists were more likely to show shame and rage at any negative feedback, regardless of it is was incidental or a formal criticism.
"Results show that unsatisfactory feedback left those high in vulnerable narcissism feeling angry and ashamed, particularly when they rated their own performance as high. In comparison, satisfactory feedback led to reports of anger among those high in vulnerable narcissism who believed they performed poorly, although this effect had no impact on reports of shame."
Even when receiving good things, vulnerable narcissists show bizarre anger and it's a telltale sign. It could be a fear of being pitied or just aggravating shame in general when receiving. However negative feedback aggravated vulnerable narcissists the most, and caused the most narcissistic rage (shamerage), well known for its overblown and unbelievable responses.
"Thus, while anger can arise in vulnerable narcissists after they receive satisfactory feedback, this type of feedback does not produce the same extremity of turmoil and negative emotions in vulnerable narcissists as unsatisfactory feedback does. "
Vulnerable narcissists pretended to not care about negative feedback but review showed them using nefarious or illicit techniques to get more information/revenge that showed they did in fact care. This is in opposition to the normal population which showed defensive minimization, not to be confused with domestic violence minimization which is a narcissistic response to being called out an abuser, whereas defensive minimization is clearly showing how and why a judge is not qualified to pass judgment and removing them through proper, consensual, straightforward and mentally well pathways.
"Vulnerable narcissists who believed they performed well on a task but received unsatisfactory feedback reported having low concern for what the judges thought of them, interpreted as a sort of motivated reasoning or defense mechanism. However, instead of this defensive minimization of concern alleviating the emotional turmoil caused by the unsatisfactory feedback, as it did for the average population, these reports of low concern led to greater experiences of shame for vulnerable narcissists"
Needing a lot of external feedback is the sign of a vulnerable narcissist.
"This is likely because vulnerable narcissists really do care about external feedback; in fact, their primary contingency of self-worth is approval from others"
Vulnerable narcissists need external feedback; they crave it, they do not do well in situations where they have little to no external feedback and often judge people who do just fine in those situations.
". They need external feedback to reinforce their self-status because they cannot do it themselves, but feel ashamed for needing it (Besser & Priel, 2010)."
Vulnerable narcissists will rely on what others think after undergoing shamerage when negatively rated even though this is not a healthy way to analyze validity in that situation; only logic can do that.
"0). In other words, when a vulnerable narcissist is faced with a mismatch between self-perceptions and external information, they place greater weight on othersā judgments than on their own, a very ineffective way to manage oneās emotional life."
Narcissists' tell-tale sign is emitting shamerage. This means not just shame, but also rage. Rage is other-oriented and harming of others, not just internalizing shame or unfortunate cases of self-harm.
"This lack of parallel mediating effects on anger may result from participants directing anger toward the source who contradicted their self-perceptions, thus focusing their attention outward. Shame, on the other hand, focuses attention inward. Therefore, as they already feel bad about themselves (i.e., low self-esteem), shame may alert vulnerable narcissists to protect themselves more and engage in defensive processes."
The paper sites a confounding effect of being encouraged by experts/religious leaders to turn shame into anger in unhealthy ways, rather than learn to process it nonviolently, coolheadedly and analytically.
". In other words, anger could arise through a more indirect pathway and thus serve as a defense mechanism in and of itself. As feeling shame is an unpleasant experience, some researchers suggest individuals react to the emotion of shame by externalizing that energy into anger, or rage (Tangney, Wagner, Fletcher, & Gramzow, 1992; Tracy, Robins, & Tangney, 2007). Yet, fully uncovering the mechanisms through which anger arises necessitates further research."
Increasing logical use is a good alternative to dysfunctional, knee-jerk ways highly sensitive narcissists often try to self-regulate their shamerage. This requires areas to teach strong logical use that is not dominating or narcissistic itself; things like origami, Hanayamas, sudoku or other self-complete logical projects help strengthen functional, coolheaded, self-complete logical skill which then proves useful in unpacking shamerage in safe ways without triggering domination.
"With daily life full of mixed information, how might vulnerable narcissists ever protect themselves from such turmoil? This article presented evidence of the unsuccessful strategies vulnerable narcissists use to regulate their own emotions."