WINNING TEAMS

All narcissistic individuals, whether male or female, continuously manipulate their environment in order to exhibit grandiosity, self-importance and superiority. Yet, despite their grandiosity, narcissists' crave attention and admiration.

This apparently paradoxical situation comes about as a result of the fact that the grandiose and bloated narcissistic behaviour is not grounded in an objective reality. As a result, both male and female narcissists continually feel a need to reinforce their fragile self views. But narcissistic men and narcissistic women often use different ways to achieve the same aim.

Narcissistic concerns might manifest differently in each gender due to differences in development and socialization^Ref

Morf and Rhodewalt^Ref concluded that men tended to use excessive effort to assert their superiority over others, whereas women's narcissistic behavior tends to take on diferent forms. Feelings of exploitiveness and entitlement are less integrated into the construct of narcissism for females relative to males.^Ref

Some of the possible differences that have been identified between male and female narcissists are described in the following table.

* Self-handicapping is a face-saving tactic. It is described as a course of action to protect or enhance one's self-evaluation in the face of an evaluation threat. People usually strive to appear competent, but when they expect that they are unlikely to perform well, they may try instead to avoid the impression that they are incapable by self-handicapping. Note that it is done to protect or enhance one's self-evaluation. Male narcissists in particular self-handicap to avoid feeling incompetent.

The reason for the differences described in the above table may be related to a failure in empathic responding by the mother, resulting in both males and females developing a deficient internalized structure of self. Strategies developed to compensate for it may take on different forms in the males and female. For example, mothers may be responding to boys as a significant other figure (e.g. husband), but to girls as an extension of self. As a result, each gender uses different psychological resources to cope with the same deficient internalized structure of self.^Ref

It appears, therefore, that there are differences between male and female narcissists. Male narcissists tend to make excessive efforts to assert their superiority over others. This behavior, to explicitly dominate and otherwise behave in line with their self-interests, is socially acceptable for males in much of western society. However, such behavior by females would reap fewer benefits. They endeavour to achieve their narcissistic goals through more subtle, indirect, and affiliative means that conform with expectations of their sex role and the pressure of different social constraints.^Ref

If you want to know more about the differences between narcissistic men and narcissistic women, read Narcissism: Behind the Mask.