Narcissism

A study found that atheists were more likely to be seen as narcissistic than religious believers - especially male atheists. See also: Atheism and narcissism

Narcissism is excessive love of oneself. The word is based on the Greek myth of Narcissus, who resisted the advances of a nymph and was consequently made to fall in love with his own reflection. In psychology, extreme narcissism is a symptom of Narcissistic personality disorder, in which a person overestimates his own abilities and attractiveness, at the expense of concern for the needs and feelings of others. However, it has been argued that a moderate amount of narcissism is healthy.

The subject of narcissism has been an extremely popular topic in psychology research. Many instruments have been created to measure the trait, the most popular of which are the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Factor analysis have revealed one overarching factor with many subtraits depending on resolution.

Subclinical narcissism

According to the journal article A Study on Sub-Clinical Narcissistic Personality Score and Its Relationship with Academic Performance-An Indian Experience: "Sub-clinical narcissism is the presence of narcissistic personality traits in otherwise normal people. People with high levels of these traits said to have inflated self-esteem and possibly a high egotism. A 40 itemed Narcissistic Personality Inventory is used to measure this type of personality traits. Those individuals who score above 20 points from the available 40 points of NPI-40 Inventory is considered to be having higher levels of Subclinical Narcissism and prone to exhibit socially dislikeable personality traits."

Subclinical narcissism is not full-blown narcissistic personality disorder.

Narcissism and invididuals who have multiple divorces

See also: Narcissism and individuals who have had multiple divorces

The abstract for journal article Personality characteristics of Divorce-Prone individuals: A preliminary clinical study published in the journal Contemporary Family Therapy indicates:

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This study focuses on Divorce-Prone individuals and the question of why some persons fail in one marriage after another. The authors studied 12 individuals who had each been divorced two or more times. They found that the cases fell into one of three broad and overlapping groups. The groups have been called the Self-Involved Narcissists, the Compliant Depressed, and the Casualties of Life's Vicissitudes. The individuals and the groups demonstrate a different etiology, different treatment problems, and a very different prognosis.

”

According to the psychologist Holly Parker who teaches the course "The Psychology of Close Relationships" at Harvard University, "Research does suggest that people who marry multiple times are more likely (than people who do not marry multiple times) to have personality traits and issues with emotional health that make it difficult to maintain satisfying, long-term relationships. That can mean, even if you're not looking for anything lasting, you won't have much fun with a narcissist whose self-absorption and emotional detachment helped end several marriages."

Study: General public believes atheists are more narcissistic

See also: Atheism and narcissism

The abstract for the 2017 journal article The perception of atheists as narcissistic which was originally published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality indicates:

"Research into prejudice toward atheists has generally focused on broad characteristics. Some of these characteristics (i.e., self-centeredness, elitism, individualism, and immorality) indicate a possible prejudice of narcissism.

"To investigate this specific prejudice, the present study used the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Terry, 1988), the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (Hendin & Cheek, 1997), and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983), which were adjusted so that the items of each measure were changed from first-person statements to third-person statements to measure participants’ perceptions.

"Participants (N = 359) were given a description of a fictitious individual named Alex, portrayed to them as either male or female and atheist or religious, or male or female with no additional information (creating 6 experimental groups), and then asked to complete the measures as they thought the individual would. Participants consistently rated atheists higher on narcissism measures and lower on empathy measures, indicating a perception of greater narcissism and a lack of empathy compared with religious individuals and controls.

"Participants’ perceptions of Alex were affected by his or her gender in conjunction with his or her religion, and the 2 variables of gender and religion interacted to create different patterns of perception. In general, interactions indicated differences in the way religion and gender impacted the perception of individuals as narcissistic, affecting perceptions of males more than females.

"The results are consistent with research findings that perceptions of atheists tend to be negative and prejudicial. This study highlights the need to compare perceptions with actual personality differences between atheists and religious individuals."

However, this study suffers from ambiguity in the definition of its concepts. Joining the description "prejudicial" to the noun "perception" is a contradiction in terms. If a person is able to perceive something, common usage indicates that the perceived object exists. But if a notion is prejudicially formed, by definition that notion is too inadequate to be called a perception of its object due to the notion's lack of sufficient evidence.

So saying a prejudicial study or examination of an unknown object's or person's traits or characteristics instead results in the recognition of misperceptions by the author of the journal article, but actually saying so about a person's examination of facts personalizes the act of misperceiving to the point that it opens to the audited author of the thesis to charges of hypocrisy, because the manner of the author's own understanding of the alleged prejudices challenging the authenticity of the study or examination is not conveyed.

Narcissus by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Real World Examples

Political

• Jimmy Carter (Blaming others for the problems he caused for the country)
• Bill Clinton (Denied the numerous accusations of sexual misbehavior of which he was credibly accused)
• Hillary Clinton (Ran the worst presidential electoral campaign in modern history, and blamed others for her failures)
• Joe Biden (Spectacular corruption and nepotism; capable of winning only through massive voter fraud)

Quotes on narcissism being antithetical to love

“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.” ― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

"The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the development of humility, objectivity and reason.

I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.” ― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

See also

• Homosexual narcissism
• Liberalism
• Atheism and narcissism