Impact of Narcissistic Trait on Various Levels: Lack of Forgiveness, Bully and Delinquent Behaviours

Impact of Narcissistic Trait on Various Levels: Lack of Forgiveness, Bully and Delinquent Behaviours

Abstract

The impact of narcissism trait on individual level, interpersonal level and societal level will be accessed using three undesired behaviours. Lack of forgiveness as the behaviour with a minor negative influence, it is the base of the following two behaviours though. Bully is a bit more severe than lack of forgiveness, but its impact is mainly across the teenagers, it leads to the third behaviour—delinquent behaviours. Delinquent behaviours can cause a lot of negative influences at the societal level. By using this progressive analysis of the behaviours, it becomes easier to tackle the relationship between the trait and the behaviours. Though the conclusion is still arguable, direction for future researches is clear. And the applications of the results are clarified.

Narcissists have never disappeared in human history. Nowadays, when people’s awareness about mental health is proliferating, the trait of being narcissistic comes into scholars’ research again. Narcissists, being sensitive with low self-esteem, are extremely aware of their self-image and how people perceive. These features expose them to various problems and make them extremely vulnerable. This article is going to tackle the impact of narcissism on individual, interpersonal and societal levels using three different undesirable behaviours. From lack of forgiveness to bully to delinquent activities, the progressive method and some theoretical knowledge will help to address the impacts precisely and critically.

Firstly, forgiveness, as one of the most significant factors that will affect the people’s responses to transgressions (Fehr, Gelfand, & Nag, 2010). It has its benefits by releasing resentment and anger as well as by prompting the restoration of relationships damaged after hurtful events have taken place (Ysseldyk , Matheson, & Anisman, 2007). In a number of studies researchers have examined the personal characteristics that influence forgiveness, which include agreeableness, emotional stability and narcissism (McCullough, 2001). Particularly, narcissism has been considered to have an “inhibitory effect on the forgiveness process (Emmons, 2000, p. 164)”. As I mentioned earlier, the sensitive narcissists tend to behave aggressively when faced with social rejection (Twenge & Campbell, 2003). “I can read people like a book”, some people might be surprised to find out that this item is included in a commonly used measure of narcissism. Actually, from the scientific perspective, this item’s inclusion is not surprising because the ability to read people’s mind and understand others is seen as central to forgiveness (Davis, 1983). In turn, forgiveness is an important building block of deep and long lasting social connections (Davis, 1996). Yet people with narcissistic trait are notoriously bad at maintaining a good relationship with others, often treating people as an object that exists only to facilitate their own needs and desires.

According to a few past researches, evidences have shown that people with high score in narcissism are generally low in forgiveness (Fincham, 2000; Fincham, Jackson, & Beach, 2005; Takaku, 2001). Even though in most of the experiments, participants were tested through questionnaire instead of some field experiments or longitudinal experiments, the data is able to point out the problem. It can be concluded that lack of forgiveness is a common behaviour of people with narcissistic trait. Though this behaviour is considered as undesired and inappropriate, the damage caused is small or could even be ignored. At the individual level, they are living their own life while being selfish and merciless sometimes. At the interpersonal level, connections between people could be damaged and fewer long lasting relationship could be built. And at the societal level, because of the flaws at the interpersonal level, the society might be less coherent due to the poor interpersonal relationships, however, people with narcissistic trait are never the majority of the society. So this lack of forgiveness will cause limited influences to the society.

Second undesired behaviour of people with narcissistic trait is bullying. Bullying, as one of the most severe problems in this world, it has affected almost thirty percent of teens and close to half of all school-aged children at least once in their lives (Baughman, Dearing, Giammarco, & Vernon, 2012). It is generally defined as “aggressive behaviour directed toward an individual or group, which happens repeatedly and over time, where an imbalance of power is evident” (Baughman et al., 2012, p. 571). According to Fanti and Kimonis’ research (2013), bullies have significantly higher narcissism scores than victims of bullying. This is because narcissistic people are generally obsessing over their self-image as well as the way they are perceived by others – they believe themselves to be important and unique, and they want others to view them that way as well. Because of this, they tend to take offence very easily when someone judges them in a way that is not compatible with this self-image – for example when they are evaluated negatively on a task or being under estimated (Pullen & Rhodes, 2008). Narcissists are highly sensitive to the consequences of interpersonal events, sometimes perceiving interpersonal interaction as threatening to their self-view, even though in reality it is not. They tend to mistrust others and can react in a hostile or sometimes even aggressive way when someone interacts with them in a manner that they perceive as being threatening to their self-image (McCullough et al., 2003). Thus, there is a very high tendency for people with narcissistic trait to bully and cause damage.

However, Linton and Power (2013) have found that victims often share the personality traits of bullies, at least in the workplace. They have found that the majority of traits typically found in bullies were also associated with being a victim, and the possible explanation could be that some traits displayed by bullies are socially undesirable and can thus elicit a bullying response from others because the persons displaying these traits do not ‘fit in’ (Linton & Power, 2013). So this trait of being bullies and victims will have major effect on their lives, including increased risk for depression and delinquent behaviour, and decreased performances in lives (Fanti & Kimonis, 2013). Thus, bullying has much bigger and worse influences on individuals, interpersonal relationship as well as society than lacking of forgiveness.

Last but not the least, as I mentioned before, those more severe delinquent behaviours are also linked to narcissistic trait. It is evident that criminal activities impact negatively on society. Moreover, approximately half of those released prisoners reoffend within a year, according to British justice sources (Ministry of Justice, 2012). The ability to recognise risky individuals before they commit offences would enable authorities to target and tailor interventions. Thus, it is useful to identify key individual difference variables that predict offending. Thus, after the long speculation of scholars, narcissism has been counted as one of the offenders’ common personality traits (Wulach, 1988). Not to repeat the characteristic of desire for power and being lack of forgiveness. They depend on other people’s praises and respects to feed their ego and lack communal motivation and fail to consider the effect they have on others (Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, Elliot, & Gregg, 2002). So when these mental factors add up, plus what I have discussed above: lack of forgiveness and bully. The link between criminal activities and narcissistic trait is quite solid though further clarifications are needed. Bushman and Baumeister (2002) compared 63 violent offenders to baseline scores in published paper. Violent offenders had higher narcissism but not higher self-esteem than baseline. However, this study only included violent criminals, and the baseline samples had unknown criminal histories. Thus, the association between trait narcissism and criminal behaviours is not fully understood.