Narcissism And Emotional Regulation Difficulties: The Regulation Of Vagus Nerve Activity

For the past few years, psychologists have carried out plentiful researches on narcissism from various aspects. Being considered as an important and complex personality, narcissism reflects in the exaggeration of the self and frailty, and gives expression to the obsession on success and the excessive desires for envy. Different types of narcissism have non-identical relations with mental health and social adaptation, which gives rise to the thinking that whether it has similar differences with emotional dysregulation. In addition, the sensibility of the narcissist on social assessment will increase the physiological reactivity upon evaluative pressure source. According to what we have investigated, however, empirical researches on the significance of relative physical signs interrelating to the narcissist are comparatively inadequate. Over the last few years, researchers have paid increasingly attention to the relations between the parasympathetic vagus activities and emotions, along with social behaviors. Moreover, RSA is an important index for measuring vagal tone. On the basis of our studies, RSA of higher baseline, more obvious reactivity and restorative shows more dynamic and flexible individual vagal regulations, and higher suitability in emotional responses and emotion regulations, which means that vagal tones support protective effects for the individual. From this point of view, the author is particularly interested in whether the vagus activities could be a moderator of the relation between narcissism and emotional dysregulation.Based on the shortages of the previous studies, this research aims to fill up those gaps by testing253subjects with NPI-16, HSNS, DERS and SES, adopting TSST Assignments, and respectively recording their Heart Rates, RSA and SCL during the stages of baseline, stress response and restoration, and lays special emphasis on investigating and verifying the regulating effects of the baselined vagal tone and vagal suppression on the relation between narcissism and emotional dysregulation, which draws the following conclusions:1.There are different degrees of relations between the Narcissistic Personality and Emotional Dysregulation of college students. Overt narcissism is negative related to emotional response,impulse control difficulties, limited access to emotion regulation strategies and lack of emotional clarity.2.Under the stress conditions in the laboratory, the overt narcissism of college students can positively predict the change of SCL before and during the interview task, and the difference of SCL during and after the task; on the other hand, the covert narcissism is able to positively predict the change of HR before and during the interview task,negatively predict the value of SCL during the interview. Dealing with the social evaluative tasks, the overt and covert narcissisms are showing the different autonomic response profiles.3.Vagal suppression can moderate the relations between narcissism and emotional dysregulation. Vagal suppression’s effect on the relations between overt narcissism and emotional clarity is marginal; at the same time vagal suppression obviously reduces the impact of covert narcissism on emotion regulation. Given the condition that covert narcissism in a higher level, stronger vagal suppression, can reduce individual’s difficulties in emotion regulation, nonacceptance of emotional response,impulse control difficulties, limited access to emotion regulation strategies and lack of emotional clarity presenting with compensation effects.