Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence?

It has been widely asserted that low self-esteem causes violence, but laboratory evidence is lacking, and some contrary observations have characterized aggressors as having favorable self-opinions.In 2 studies, both simple self-esteem and narcissism were measured, and then individual participants were given an opportunity to aggress against someone who had insulted them or praised them or against an innocent third person.Self-esteem proved irrelevant to aggression.The combination of narcissism and insult led to exceptionally high levels of aggression toward the source of the insult.Neither form of self-regard affected displaced aggression, which was low in general.These findings contradict the popular view that low self-esteem causes aggression and point instead toward threatened egotism as an important cause.How do people's thoughts and feelings about themselves influence their propensities to perform acts of aggression against others?Multiple answers to this question can be suggested.FOr decades, clinical psychologists have subscribed to a conventional view that low self-esteem underlies aggression.Yet this is difficult to reconcile with common observations that aggressors often think very highly of themselves, as evidenced by nationalistic imperialism, "master race" ideologies, aristocratic dueling, playground bullies, and street gang rhetoric.The present research was designed to test the opposing predictions about the link between self-views and hostile aggression.Perhaps surprisingly, the psychology of aggression lacks published laboratory experimental findings on whether self-love or self-hate contributes more to aggressive behavior.One possible reason is that many studies on aggression were conducted before trait differences in self-esteem, narcissism, and similar self-opinions became widely used in research.Alternatively, it may be that researchers have tried but failed to find a direct link.If violent acts are indeed committed by only a small subset of people with favorable self-views, then a simple measure of self-esteem might not show direct correlations with aggression.