Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Lead to Violence?
It has been widely asserted that low self-esteem causes aggression and violence, but laboratory evidence is lacking, and some contrary observations have characterized aggressors as having inflated self-opinions. In experimental studies, we measured both simple self-esteem and narcissism and then gave participants 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. Similar findings were obtained for adults and children. In a meta-analytic study, violent prisoners who had murdered, assaulted, raped, or robbed someone had higher narcissism scores than did other men the same age. Self-esteem scores were similar for violent and nonviolent men. Two additional experiments focused on reducing narcissistic aggression through similarity-to-self manipulations. Because narcissists think they are wonderful, they might be less aggressive toward similar individuals. The results were consistent with this hypothesis. In one experiment, narcissists were less aggressive towards individuals who shared their birthday. In another experiment, narcissists were less aggressive towards individuals with the same type of fingerprints. These findings contradict the popular view that low self-esteem causes aggression and point instead toward threatened egotism as an important cause. The findings are especially troubling because levels of narcissism are increasing over time.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS TALK WILL TAKE PLACE AT 3:30p.m.
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