Citation

Thomaes S, Bushman BJ, Stegge H, Olthof T. Child Dev. 2008; 79(6): 1792-1801.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01226.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This experiment tested how self‐views influence shame‐induced aggression. One hundred and sixty‐three young adolescents (M = 12.2 years) completed measures of narcissism and self‐esteem. They lost to an ostensible opponent on a competitive task. In the shame condition, they were told that their opponent was bad, and they saw their own name at the bottom of a ranking list. In the control condition, they were told nothing about their opponent and did not see a ranking list. Next, participants could blast their opponent with noise (aggression measure). As expected, narcissistic children were more aggressive than others, but only after they had been shamed. Low self‐esteem did not lead to aggression. In fact, narcissism in combination with high self‐esteem led to exceptionally high aggression.