The Relationship Between Narcissism And Prosocial Behavior: The Role Of Self - Promotion And Successful Feedback

Narcissism is a very complicated personality. Narcissists are arrogant but inferiority, strong but weak, likeable and unfriendly. Since the ancient time,we Chinese admire modest and harmonious, but with the rapid development of our society and the improvement of people’s living and spirit standard, the realization of personal value has increasingly emphasized by our society and people seem to becoming more and more "ego" or "narcissism". So study about Narcissistic personality characteristics is socially meaningful.At present, domestic research about the relation of narcissism and prosocial behavior has been in the theoretical conception stage and through questionnaires measuring to achieve, generally those questionnaire are social desirability, can’t truly measure the individuals’, especially narcissists’prosocial behavior. (Narcissists will show high prosocial tendency to maintain their good image)The present study first examined the relationship between narcissism and prosocial behavior via a created virtual helping scene with college students as subjects in Experiment 1. And then I further examined potential factors that affected the. relationship between narcissism and prosocial behavior:personal trait or external feedback? Generally, experiment 2 considered how personal stable trait, self-enhancement, influenced the effect of narcissism on prosocial behavior; experiment 3 explored whether external feedback affected the relationship between narcissism and prosocial behavior.Experiment 1:we recruited 60 freshman and sophomore from Shaanxi Normal University with different majors. We adopted Narcissistic Personality Inventory applied to the general population in China, Self-enhancement Questionnaire made by Xiaocen Liu and do prosocial experiment in laboratory to probe the relation between narcissism and self-enhancement and the relation between narcissism and prosocial behavior.Experiment 2:we recruited 120 freshman and sophomore from Shaanxi Normal University with different majors. We adopted Narcissistic Personality Inventory applied to the general population in China, Self-enhancement Questionnaire made by Xiaocen Liu and do prosocial experiment in laboratory to probe the relation between narcissism and self-enhancement, the relation among narcissism, self-enhancement and prosocial behavior.Experiment 3:we recruited 121 freshman and sophomore from Shaanxi Normal University with different majors. On the basis of Experiment 1, we add success and failure feedback to probe the change about prosocial behavior in narcissists. Result:(1) Subjects with higher level of narcissism showed more prosocial behavior compared with those with lower level of narcissism;(2) Subjects with higher level of narcissism are of higher level of self-enhancement compared with those with lower level of narcissism;(3) Self-enhancement influenced the relationship between narcissism and prosocial behavior. Specifically, in the group with higher level of self-enhancement, people with higher level of narcissism showed significantly less prosocial behavior than those with lower level of narcissism;(4) Achievement feedback influenced the relationship between narcissism and prosocial behavior. Specifically, in the group with success feedback, the prosocial behavior showed no significant difference between subjects with higher level and lower level of narcissism; while in the group with failure feedback, subject in higher level of narcissism showed significantly more prosocial behavior than those with lower level of narcissism.