The narcissist’s sense of humor

A correlational and an experimental ego threat study on the links between narcissism and adaptive and maladaptive humor styles

Bibliographic Data

ID21623627
AuthorsTobias Altmann (0000-0001-7294-7808, University of Duisburg-Essen, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume43
Issue36
Pages28999-29010
Publication date2024-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCurrent Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1046-1310 • E-ISSN: 1936-4733
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s12144-024-06528-x
OpenAlexW4401922557
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited44

Previous research has shown that narcissism is linked to both adaptive and maladaptive forms of interpersonally relevant behaviors, such as charm and aggression, respectively. One line of research that uses styles of humor as the outcome variable found that especially grandiose narcissism is positively related to both adaptive affiliative humor (strengthening interpersonal relationships) and maladaptive aggressive humor (making derogatory fun of others) alike. This seemingly contradictory finding may be explained in two ways. First, particular facets of grandiose narcissism may be related solely to adaptive or solely to maladaptive humor. Second, adaptive and maladaptive characteristics may be expressed by a person to varying degrees depending on their current narcissistic state (i.e., whether the self is faced with ego threats or in a relaxed state). To test these assumptions, the present study applied both a correlational approach with multiple measures of narcissism and an experimental approach that used an intelligence-based ego threat task. The correlational results showed that each facet of narcissism showed distinct correlational patterns with adaptive and maladaptive humor styles. The experimental results showed that ego threat moderated the relationships between narcissism and humor styles. For instance, grandiose narcissism was more strongly positively related to affiliative humor in the nonthreatening condition and was more strongly positively related to aggressive humor in the ego threat condition. These results clarify and explain the previous seemingly contradictory findings and support the importance of differentiating between the facets and states of narcissism, highlighting the complexity of the construct

Aggression · Developmental psychology · Id, ego and super-ego · Narcissism · Humor Studies and Applications · Personality Traits and Psychology · Psychology · Social Psychology

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