Narcissism and emotion dysregulation: Narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry have divergent associations with emotion regulation difficulties

Narcissism has been found to have conflicting associations with emotion dysregulation across previous studies. The purpose of the present study was to examine the connections between particular aspects of narcissism and emotion regulation difficulties. More specifically, we were interested in the possibility that narcissistic admiration (an agentic form of narcissism that is characterized by assertive self-enhancement and self-promotion) and narcissistic rivalry (an antagonistic form of narcissism that is characterized by self-protection and self-defense) may have divergent associations with emotion regulation difficulties in a large sample of undergraduates (N = 1,018). Narcissistic admiration was negatively associated with problematic responses to emotions and poor recognition of emotions, whereas narcissistic rivalry was positively associated with both of these forms of emotion dysregulation. Taken together, these results suggest that narcissistic admiration may be characterized by the ability to regulate emotional experiences more effectively which is markedly different from narcissistic rivalry which is characterized by emotion dysregulation. Discussion will focus on the implications of these results for understanding the connections that the agentic and antagonistic aspects of narcissism have with emotion dysregulation.