The Effect Of Narcissists' Preference For Providing Social Support Strategies On Interpersonal Trust

Narcissists are popular at zero acquaintance,always being perceived as assertive,sociable,attractive,and competent.However,narcissist’s striving for admiration turns us off in the long term relationship.Narcissists are annoying and dislikable because they behave in a manner that is rather selfish,overly dominant,hostile,and arrogant.Among the socially aversive personalities,subclinical narcissism is especially prominent linked the Dark Triad with selfishness.Scholars found narcissism reflects insensitivity to punishment,and the propensity to exploit others,seems unrelated to trustworthiness.There are still some controversy between narcissism and interpersonal in current research.High level grandiose narcissists tend to score low on trust measured as a general opinion about others.Communal narcissists consider themselves as extraordinarily trustworthy in the contrast.Context factor such as social support may cause influence interpersonal trust outcome in social relationship.Pervious research confirmed that receiving and providing social support is beneficial at both an individual and societal level as they predict better health and well-being.We found a gap between narcissism trait and social support based on existing research.Empirical studies focused more on the receipt of support rather than provide of support.Existing literature indicates that internal mechanism of social support provision and interpersonal outcomes is a target.One survey research and two experiments would be conducted aim to investigate whether preference will be found in narcissists social support provision.We also tested the mediating effect of empathy or views of their own responsiveness among support provision and interpersonal trust.During the hypothetical scenarios survey research,we found no support provision preference correlate with trait narcissism.General trust and trait narcissism interact together to predict social support provision degree.Narcissists with high level general trust may provide more support strategies to help their friends.Perspective taking mediated the support provision degree on own trust attitudes or trustworthiness.Trait narcissism moderated the indirect effect of perspective taking(cognitive empathy)on trust attitudes,but not trustworthiness.Experiment 1(n=162)conducted a one way between-subjects design to investigate the support provision preference of narcissists.Manipulation of support strategy including two-level(validation condition/reframing condition).Results shows narcissists prefer to provide negative validation strategy.This preference leads to higher lever of trust but no correlates with trustworthiness.Views of their own responsiveness mediated how well the interaction went on trust attitudes.None mediation model was found in trustworthiness.Experiment 2 conducted a 2(state narcissism manipulation:priming/control)×2(support strategy manipulation:validation/reframing)×2(manipulation of success interaction:successful support/unsuccessful support)between subjects design(n=317)to examine effects of recipients’ receptivity to support directly influenced providers’experience of a support interaction as well as their interpersonal trust evaluations.Results confirmed that support providers felt worse about the interaction,about themselves,and less trust towards friend when their imagined support offerings were not successful.However,when providing negative validation support,state narcissism manipulation mitigated the negative impact caused by unsuccessful support feedback.Mediation analyses suggested that it was providers’ increase perception of their own responsiveness in the successful support condition,which led to both higher trust attitude and trustworthiness.These findings illustrate how narcissist attempts to provide negative validation support towards best friend in long term interpersonal domain.Both perspective taking and views of their own responsiveness reveals internal mechanism of interpersonal trust in social support providing context.Current study builds complete understanding of the dyadic nature of trust.Besides,this research clarified the relationship between narcissism,social support and interpersonal trust.Empirical evidence highlights the context factors influence on Interpersonal long-term consequences of narcissism.