Why Narcissists Self-Destruct, Inefficacious, Self-defeat (Dynamic Self-regulatory Processing Model)

Prosocial and malignant narcissists are exceptions.

Why grandiosity and not real traits and accomplishments

Why tedious shortcuts rather than often much easier real achievements

Why shared fantasy when a relationship in reality is even more enticing and promising?

Why aggressive entitlement even when people are willing to serve and cater to needs

Why envy and devalue admirers and fans?

Why claim divine perfection when people much prefer human greatness?

Why ignore emotions when they are the key to self-efficacy?

Why be exploitative and egotistical when team work and collaboration provide better outcomes?

Modern AI intended to impress us and confabulates (hallucinates).

Dynamic Self-regulatory Processing Model

People invest in the construction, maintenance, defense, and enhancement of self-view (Morf and Rhodewalt).

How people see themselves and would like to be seen by others drives the self-system via perceived and interpreted opportunities or obstacles.

The resulting dynamics are both internal and external (interactive or reactive).

Self is a continuous, dynamic process of self-construction and self-regulation. It is a coherent, organized, connectionist (linking stimuli and responses via learning), processing network of cognitive-affective and motivational representations and processes, constantly transacting with the social environment.

Signatures of personality: stable if (trigger) – then (response) relations. Reminiscent of the Cognitive-Affective Personality Model (CAPM) of Mischel and Shoda.

The Model has three components: mental processing (construal) system, self-regulatory processes, and social world, comprised of other-systems and socio-cultural context.

Mental Construal System: cognitive, affective, and motivational representations (combination mentalized ToM and IWM) of actual self and ideal self (self-construal) and of others (other-construal). Involves information processing + spreading activation.

Intrapersonal processes include interpretation, selective attention, biased recall, and related affects.

Interpersonal processes involve impression management via, for example, making excuses, reframing, and self-presentations.

Self-construal of narcissists explicitly grandiose: perfection, uniqueness, overperception.

But the model fails to take into account the delusional cognitive distortion.

Narcissists concerned with the agentic, not with the communal. Low on agreeableness and intimacy. Approach-oriented (future beneficial outcomes weigh more than actual adverse ones). Their self-esteem is competitive, not affiliative.

Narcissism is a dissonant and compensatory system: inferior-superior (implicit vs. explicit), devaluation-idealization, ego-syntony vs. ago-dystony, prosociality (instrumentalizing others-communality (no true affiliation or intimacy), internalized (depression, suicidal ideation, emotional dysregulation) and then externalized aggression, like anger or hubris.

Aggression serves as the inhibition of shame and worthlessness when faced with failure and of positive emotions when faced with love or intimacy.

Fantasy as a defense against stress. But the narcissist’s fantasy involves cognitive distortions and impaired reality testing.

Discrepancy between implicit and explicit self-esteem leads to hypervigilance, self-affirmations, and self-enhancement when the False Self is threatened and shame is accessed.

Other-construal and intrapersonal Self-regulatory Mechanisms: Most others are inferior. Overperception and a kind of attribution error (I choose to succeed or fail or handicap, others succeed because of luck or huge effort, not because of their innate abilities).

Devaluation of source of threat and the validity of any challenge. Impaired causality perception. Rewriting history (confabulation).

Some role models are idealized and when they are responsive to the narcissist, they are co-idealized.

Narcissists are envious which may indicate that they are actually regard others as superior.

But really, narcissists are dependent on all others for self-regulation. Others can even modify the narcissist’s behaviors and even traits and affects (for example: commitment, satisfaction, and communal conduct in intimate relationships depends crucially on the partner).

The 4 Ss. The partner’s looks and accomplishments are merely another form of narcissistic supply via co-idealization.

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