Narcissism refers to an inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement, a strong need for power, success, and admiration, and a sensitivity to criticism.
However, narcissism is not a one-size-fits-all concept. A narcissist’s desire for power, success, and admiration can manifest as an exaggerated sense of how powerful, influential, or intelligent they are.
This form of narcissism is known as agentic narcissism. People with agentic narcissism tend to have low empathy for others and openly criticize those who do not appreciate them.
But a narcissist’s desire for power, success, and admiration can also appear as an inflated sense of their contributions to the community. For instance, narcissists might see themselves as highly empathetic, generous, or morally exemplary (Nehrlich et al., 2019).
This type of narcissism is also referred to as communal narcissism. Although communal narcissists also have reduced empathy for others, they may avoid openly criticizing others. As a result, they may appear more compassionate than agentic narcissists.
Agentic and communal narcissism are forms of individual narcissism, or what we often just call narcissism.
The third kind of narcissism is known as collective narcissism (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009). This form involves an inflated sense of the importance and entitlement of one’s group, resentment over the perceived lack of recognition of one’s group, and sensitivity to criticism of their group.
Racists, for example, are collective narcissists, as they have an inflated sense of the importance and entitlement of their racial group, feel resentful over society's lack of recognition of their perceived superiority, and are highly sensitive to criticism of their group.
Racists are agentic collective narcissists, as they pursue their narcissistic desire for power, success, and admiration by seeking recognition as members of their group.
In a recent study, psychologist Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska and her team found that. (2021) show that collective narcissism can also take a communal form that is conceptually and empirically distinct from agentic collective narcissism.
Żemojtel-Piotrowska et al. (2021) communal collective narcissism is described as a strong group identity with overly positive beliefs about the group's contributions, a sense of entitlement about the group's communal value, and resentment over the group's lack of recognition.
To test this concept, the team developed a scale for communal collective narcissism based on their definition. The scale asked if my group members are helpful, if our group will be famous for doing good things in the future, and if there are few groups as moral as ours.
Żemojtel-Piotrowska et al. then, the scale was given to 856 people between the ages of 18 and 83 (439 females, 417 males; average age = 42). To refine the scale, they removed items that proved to be redundant or overlapped with items on the scales for agentic collective narcissism and individual communal narcissism. This created a scale with seven items to measure communal collective narcissism.
The researchers then tested their seven-item scale against the scale for agentic collective narcissism, using the participants’ views of their own country compared to other countries as a test scenario.
This study confirmed that the two collective narcissism scales, while related, are empirically distinct. Agentic collective narcissists tended to focus on their group’s superior agentic traits (e.g., "My group has a higher IQ than other groups"). In contrast, communal collective narcissists were more likely to emphasize how their group helped the community (e.g., "My group always fights for the poor and oppressed").
In a third study, the team examined what motivated communal collective narcissists to criticize outgroup members who threatened the ingroup’s image.
The results showed that agentic collective narcissists criticized outgroup members who threatened the agentic virtues of their ingroup, such as their intelligence.
Communal collective narcissists, on the other hand, criticized outgroup members who threatened the communal virtues of their ingroup, such as their compassion or support for others.
In a fourth study, Żemojtel-Piotrowska et al. tested whether communal collective narcissism differed from agentic collective narcissism in their attitudes toward outgroups that presented a perceived threat to the ingroup.
Here, the team found that, like their agentic counterparts, communal collective narcissists had genuinely hostile tendencies. For example, they showed a preference for military aggression and a reluctance to forgive outgroups for a perceived insult to their ingroup.