The Moderation Effect Of Fundamental Dimensions Of Social Cognition And Interpersonal Familiarity On The Attractiveness Of Narcissists

Familiarity is one important factor that affects the people’s attractiveness. Generally speaking, people prefer acquaintances to strangers. But some studies found that narcissists are more popular with strangers than with acquaintances. Why do narcissists bear this different attractiveness? The fundamental dimensions of social cognition suggest that agency and communion have different cognitive priority under different circumstances. Communion has priority in first meeting while agency has priority when people evaluate himself or close others. This cognitive priority may be one explanation of narcissists’ different attractiveness in different familiarity. Recently researchers differ two types of narcissists, agency narcissists and communal narcissists, basing on the way by which narcissists attract the attention of others. Agency narcissists have been researched for a long time on their attractiveness, but there are few researches on communal narcissists. It’s an open question whether the communal narcissists have the same attractiveness like agency narcissists, and the relationship between communal narcissists’ attractiveness and fundamental dimensions is also not known. Some studies try to improve agency narcissists’ relationship by experimental method such as priming program, and they got positive results. Can this method be useful to communal narcissists? In order to explain these questions, three researches were designed:In study 1, we aimed at exploring whether communion or agency is more important when people get to know the two kinds of narcissists, and we also want to know the relationship between attractiveness and fundamental dimensions in familiar and unfamiliar circumstances. In this study, we asked participants to imagine that they like or do not like someone in unfamiliar condition, then evaluate his communion and agency. Then we asked people to imagine that they like or do not like someone in familiar condition and evaluate fundamental dimensions again. But we only described some traits of narcissists in familiar condition.In study 2, we aimed at explaining how familiarity and fundamental dimensions of social cognition influence the attractiveness of three narcissist groups. we used stranger and acquaintance as two conditions of familiarity, and divided subjects into three groups, agency narcissists, communal narcissists and non-narcissists, basing on the NPI and CNI results. After the strangers who never meet the subject before watch subject’s self-introduction video, they evaluate subject’s interpersonal attraction and agency and communal traits. And subjects are also evaluated by their acquaintances on attraction and agency and communal traits..In study 3, in order to improving narcissists’ attractiveness, we try to use subliminal priming program to change subjects’ cognitive preference. In this study, agency narcissist group subjects finish communal subliminal priming program and neutral priming program, but communal narcissist group subjects finish agency priming program and neutral priming program. When they finish one priming task, they should judge 64 words. These words are agency or communal adjectives, and subjects should judge if these words can describe themselves. And we also let non-narcissist group subjects finish priming experiment as control group. Then we compare the keystrokes times and reaction time.The results are as follows:(1) When people meet each other for the first time, agency and communion traits have equal importance. But when subjects first meet and like others, the positive communal traits have more important effect. When subjects do not like other at first sight, the negative agency and negative communal traits both have effect on the attraction. When people know each other well, the agency traits have more important influence on attraction. But when people like each other, the communal dimension has more important effect; when subjects do not like others, positive agency and negative communal traits affect the attraction together. And in familiar and hate condition, agency narcissists’ negative agency and negative communal traits have more influence on their attraction and communal narcissists’ attractiveness is more influenced by positive agency and negative communal traits.(2) The non-narcissists group and the two narcissists groups have equal interpersonal attraction to strangers and acquaintances. When people meet other for the first time, the interpersonal attraction is predicted by positive communal traits. This is true for non-narcissists, agency narcissists and communal narcissists. When people are familiar with each other, the interpersonal attraction of agency narcissists can not be predicted by agency traits nor by communal traits, and the attraction of communal narcissists is predicted by communal traits. The non-narcissists’ attraction is decided by communal traits too.(3) Based on the keystrokes in the priming task, priming communal pictures can weaken the cognitive preference of agency narcissists to positive agency words. And the reaction time suggests that priming communal pictures can strengthen the tendency of agency narcissists’ focus on positive communal words.(4) Based on the keystrokes in the priming task, priming agency pictures can weaken the cognitive preference of communal narcissists to positive communal words, and strengthen the tendency of communal narcissists’ focus on positive agency words. And the reaction time suggests that priming communal pictures lengthen the reaction time of negative agency words of communal narcissists group.In conclusion:(1) When people meet each other for the first time, the positive communal traits predict the interpersonal attractiveness of three kinds of narcissists.(2) When people are familiar with each other, the communal traits predict the attraction of communal narcissists; the agency and communal traits predict the attraction of non-narcissists together; the attraction of agency narcissist is influenced by agency and communal traits but can not be decided by agency nor communal dimension.(3) The communal pictures make the agency narcissists pay attention to communal traits, and the agency pictures can turn the communal narcissists attention to agency traits.