Needing others to know you’re good: Narcissists’ pride in success is contingent on peer reactions.

Abstract

= 3,463), participants recalled a real-life success or failure and reported their feelings of pride in response (Studies 1, 2, and 4) or experienced success in a controlled, laboratory experiment and reported pride in the success after receiving either positive or negative social feedback (Study 3). Across studies, two key findings emerged. First, narcissists reported greater pride following failure than those low in narcissism, and this difference was stronger than in a neutral control condition, consistent with prior research on narcissistic defensiveness. Second, in response to success, narcissists' feelings of pride were contingent on their peers' respect and admiration, such that they felt less pride than nonnarcissistic individuals following successes that did not make them feel prestigious in the eyes of their peers. This pattern of emotional responding was unique to narcissism and did not emerge for self-esteem. Results from this multimethod investigation suggest that narcissists show a distinctive pattern of pride in response to success and failure. They respond defensively to failure, reporting greater pride than nonnarcissists, and this pattern cannot be attributed to baseline, trait-level differences. In contrast, following success, narcissists' emotions are contingent upon perceiving respect and admiration from their peers, consistent with recent theoretical perspectives on narcissism that position status striving as narcissists' fundamental motive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).