Citation

Thomaes S, Bushman BJ, Orobio de Castro B, Cohen GL, Denissen JJ. Psychol. Sci. 2009; 20(12): 1536-1542.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Utrecht University;

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02478.x

PMID

19906123

Abstract

Narcissistic individuals are prone to become aggressive when their egos are threatened. We report a randomized field experiment that tested whether a social-psychological intervention designed to lessen the impact of ego threat reduces narcissistic aggression. A sample of 405 young adolescents (mean age = 13.9 years) were randomly assigned to complete either a short self-affirmation writing assignment (which allowed them to reflect on their personally important values) or a control writing assignment. We expected that the self-affirmation would temporarily attenuate the ego-protective motivations that normally drive narcissists' aggression. As expected, the self-affirmation writing assignment reduced narcissistic aggression for a period of a school week, that is, for a period up to 400 times the duration of the intervention itself. These results provide the first empirical demonstration that buttressing self-esteem (as opposed to boosting self-esteem) can be effective at reducing aggression in at-risk youth.

Language: en