COMMENTARIES

Despite keen interest in the construct of narcissism, the field of personality and social psychology has lacked a comprehensive framework under which to fit together the relevant empirical bits and pieces. Morf and Rhodewalt's target article takes an admirable first step toward remedying this deficiency. Morf and Rhodewalt's (this issue) conceptualization of narcissism brings the construct to life. These authors have moved the empirical focus beyond the psychometric, trait-like properties of the construct and into its dynamic, regulatory utility. How do narcissists navigate the troubled waters of everyday life? How do narcissists regulate their psychological functioning at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal level? In the spirit of Morf and Rhodewalt's thinking, we approach the narcissistic self from a motivational perspective. We wonder about the motives that guide the evaluation of the narcissistic self. What do narcissists want to know about themselves, and what do they make of this knowledge? To what extent do they accept or reject feedback about themselves? If they reject feedback, why do they do so and at what cost? We argue that narcissists, compared to nonnarcissists, have both motivational surfeits and motivational deficits. Four motives have been identified and documented in the self-evaluation literature (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997). These are self-enhancement (the motive to protect and elevate the positivity of the self), self-verification (the motive to validate cherished self-views), self-assessment (the motive to gain accurate knowledge about the self), and self-improvement (the motive to better aspects of the self). For the purposes of this commentary, we draw attention to how two of the above-mentioned motives bifurcate. First, the self-enhancement motive divides into an enhancement motive (striving to increase the positivity of the self-concept-an approach orientation) and a protection motive (striving to decrease the negativity of the self-concept-an avoidance orientation). Enhancement and protection may have distinct correlates and consequences, as recent research on self-esteem (Rhodewalt, Morf, Hazlett, & Fairfield, 1991; Tice, 1991) and achievement motivation (Elliot & Church, 1997) suggests. Second, self-verification divides into positive verification (confirming positive self-views) and negative verification (confirming negative self-views; Pemberton & Sedikides, 2001). Given that the enhancement motive is difficult to distinguish empirically from the positive-verification motive (what Morf and Rhodewalt call self-affirmation), we refer to them jointly as enhancement-positive verification. As Morf and Rhodewalt amply document (see also Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, Elliot, & Gregg, in press), narcissists have a seemingly unlimited supply of the enhancement-positive verification motive. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to state that this motive must subjectively feel like an internal geyser to the narcissist, welling up within them, to be released in practically all forms of intraand interpersonal regulation. Narcissists make no apologies for their claims of superiority. They adore their self-image, are hopelessly self-centered in their craving for attention and admiration, and feel deserving of unlimited praise. They regard themselves as preeminent persons, brilliant supernovas in a dark social universe populated by inferior peers. Others simply cannot match their celestial brilliance. A surfeit of the enhancement-positive verification motive is one way in which the motivational system of narcissists differs from that of nonnarcissists. Unfortunately for them, narcissists must also live in the real social world, a world that provides them with feedback that is not uniformly positive. Indeed, the feedback that narcissists receive follows a pattern of progressive disenchantment. In the initial interaction encounters, narcissists receive favorable feedback: They give off the impression of being confident, engaging, clever, and full of life. Alas, this impression evaporates rapidly. Before long (indeed, by the seventh weekly interaction; Paulhus, 1998), narcissists are perceived as shameless braggarts, conceited, uninteresting, and hostile. Such attributes do not boost anyone's bid for public office (Leary, Bednarski, Hammon, & Duncan, 1997). Perceivers smarten up, see through narcissists, and realize that narcissists are full of themselves rather than full of life. Initial attraction gives way to eventual repulsion. Narcissists start to reap the dire consequences of their own behavior: They receive increasingly unfavorable feedback. Perceivers are likely to express their dislike for narcissists in both indirect and direct ways. They cease to pay attention to them, become frugal with their expressions of admiration, start to avoid and distance themselves from narcissists (e.g., gaze aversion at professional meetings, noninclusion at social gatherings), spread unflattering gossip about them, and (if push comes to shove) openly tell the narcissists what they think of them. Inevitably, the narcissists must come face-to-face with recalcitrant real-