Nowadays, an increasing tendency to describe narcissism as a non–clinical personality trait is being observed among psychologists (e.g., Paulhus and Williams, 2002). Vulnerable narcissism is probably connected with more realistic self-perception of emotional abilities. The latter results are consistent with previous findings showing that individuals with high level of grandiose narcissism tend to overestimate their abilities.

Specifically, trait EI showed a positive relation with grandiose narcissism, while ability EI negatively predicted this type of narcissism. Moreover, when the two EI scores were analyzed together in a single model, they were associated with grandiose narcissism in opposite directions. Grandiose narcissism was significantly positively connected with trait EI.

In the current study ( n = 249) we found that vulnerable narcissism was significantly and negatively associated with trait (self-reported) EI however, it did not correlate with ability (performance) EI. Grandiose narcissism is characterized by high self–esteem, interpersonal dominance and a tendency to overestimate one’s capabilities, whereas vulnerable narcissism presents defensive, avoidant and hypersensitive attitude in interpersonal relations. We examined the association between two types of narcissism, grandiose and vulnerable, and self-reported as well as ability emotional intelligence (EI).

Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.

Marcin Zajenkowski *, Oliwia Maciantowicz, Kinga Szymaniak and Paweł Urban

Inverted narcissist traits