Two facets of narcissism and compulsive buying = Two facets of narcissism and compulsive buying

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Although the association between narcissistic personality and compulsive buying has been posited (e.g., Krueger, 1988), there is still a dearth of empirical research on the issue. According to recent research on narcissistic personality and pathology (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010), narcissism consists of two related but distinct facets. While overt narcissism is characterized by entitled attitudes, an inflated self-image without requisite accomplishments and skills, as well as fantasizing omnipotence and superiority, hypersensitive narcissism is associated with privately holding inflated and perfectionistic fantasies of what one ought to be or achieve while feeling self-doubt and intense shame about not being able to fulfill them. Unfortunately, extant research has only focused on overt narcissism in compulsive buying, ignoring the contribution of hypersensitive narcissism on compulsive buying (Rose, 2007). We fill this gap in this manuscript by simultaneously assessing the association between hypersensitive narcissism vis-a-vis overt narcissism and compulsive buying. We hypothesize that both overt narcissism and hypersensitive narcissism have positive association with compulsive buying. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the two facets of narcissism have the multiplicative effect on compulsive buying severity. Lastly, we hypothesize that materialism significantly mediates the association between overt narcissism and compulsive buying, whereas trait self-control mediates the association between hypersensitive narcissism and compulsive buying. These hypotheses were tested based on a large survey data from individuals who frequently engage in buying lapses (N = 860), of which 40% exceeded Faber and O’Guinn’s (1993) diagnostic cut-off for compulsive buying. All the hypotheses received strong support. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.