Cognitive avoidance, humiliation and narcissism in non-clinical individuals: An experimental study

Scholars have suggested that narcissism may be underpinned by feelings of humiliation. It is possible that grandiosity is a coping strategy aimed at avoiding the painful emotional and mental states associated with feeling inadequate. To test this hypothesis, we assessed the interactions among cognitive avoidance (measured using the Cognitive Avoidance Scale), feelings of humiliation (measured using the Humiliation Inventory) and narcissism (measured using the Narcissism Personality Inventory) in a non-clinical sample of 397 participants, classified as identifying either with both grandiose and humiliating scenarios, or with only one of these types of scene. In the case of participants that felt engaged with both grandiosity and humiliation, significant interaction effects were found between narcissism and both humiliation and cognitive avoidance; and both effects were significantly correlated with grandiosity. In contrast, no significant interactions were found among the variables under study for the other participants in the sample. The set of significant interactions indicate that cognitive avoidance played a role in the process of self-identifying with both grandiosity and humiliation in a sub-sample of non-clinical individuals prone to narcissism. This finding might be interpreted as suggesting that there is a form of narcissism in which grandiosity is an avoidant strategy aimed at coping with feelings of humiliation.