The Impact of Narcissistic Dimensions on Feelings of Envy
Research on the effects of envy in marketing situations suggests that envious consumer reactions can come in a positive form, benign envy, and a negative form, malicious envy. In this research it is shown that narcissistic personality dimensions differently impact benign and malicious envy. More specifically, results indicate that authority and exploitativeness reduces benign envy while exhibitionism reduces malicious envy. Entitlement increases both benign and malicious envy. This means that narcissistic traits are associated with both positive, benign envy, but also negative, malicious envy.
The Impact of Narcissistic Dimensions on Feelings of Envy
Empirical evidence has demonstrated that levels of narcissism is on the rise in the Western world and most profoundly so among Generation Y consumers (Foster, Campbell, and Twenge 2003; Twenge et al. 2008). Narcissism refers to inflated self-esteem, high interest to gain status and material standards, selfishness, feelings of entitlement and being unique (Campbell et al. 2000). These findings mean that marketers need to understand how narcissists function as consumers and how they react to marketing- or consumption-related situations. In this work, the relationship between narcissistic dimensions and envy towards other people’s purchases was investigated. Envy is defined as a painful feeling of frustration that arises when a person compares him- or herself to another similar person and realizes that the other person is better off (Salovey and Rodin 1991, 395; Smith and Kim 2007, 49; Van de, Zeelenberg, and Pieters 2011a, 984). Van de Ven and his colleagues separate between positive envy (i.e. benign envy), and negative envy (i.e. malicious envy) (Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters 2009; 2010; 2011ab). Malicious envy is characterized by frustration and hostility towards the envied person (Van de Ven et al. 2011a). Benign envy is also a frustrating feeling but differs from malicious envy by that the envier feels admiration towards the envied (Van de Ven et al. 2011a, 985). Scholars have documented that benign envy increases product liking and willingness to pay, in contrast to malicious envy, which decreases product liking and willingness to pay (Van de Ven et al. 2011a).
Consumers are often sensitive to the purchases of other people, and narcissist, being materialistic and status-driven, are likely to react with envy to products of others. However, the effects of narcissism are not self-evident. First, it could be expected that narcissists react with malicious envy, since scholars have shown that narcissists often react with hostility when facing ego-threatening information (Baumeister, Bushman, and Campbell 2000; Bushman and Baumeister 1998; Twenge and Campbell 2003), and envy has been argued to be a reaction to a perceived ego threat (Salovey 1991; Salovey and Rodin 1984; 1991). Second, another possibility is that narcissists, being over-optimistic, extensive risk-takers and impulsive (Campbell, Goodie, and Foster 2004), will react with benign envy since they perceive that the benefit is not out of their reach and rather perceive the envied and the purchase as an inspiration.
Narcissism is conceptualized to consist of seven dimensions; vanity, self-sufficiency, exhibitionism, superiority, exploitativeness, entitlement and authority (Raskin and Terry 1988). It is proposed here that different dimensions of narcissism differently impact benign and malicious envy. Scholars have argued that exploitativness, superiority, entitlement are related to hostility (McDermott, Schwartz, and Trevathan-Minnis 2011; Reidy et al. 2008), which would indicate a relationship between these dimensions and malicious envy. Exhibitionism has been related to impulsiveness (Vazire and Funder 2006; Washburn et al. 2004), indicating a positive relationship between exhibitionism and benign envy. Based on these studies, we hypothesize that narcissistic authority, superiority, exploitativeness and entitlement are positively associated with malicious envy and negatively related to benign envy (hypothesis 1). Also, we expected that that exhibitionism is positively associated with benign envy and negatively associated with malicious envy (hypothesis 2). We expect self-sufficiency and vanity to be unrelated to benign and malicious envy.
107 students (60.7% women) participated in the study as part of course participation (Mage =
22.4, SD = 2.34). A student sample was used as students have been found to be relatively homogeneous and many scholars argue that homogeneity is beneficial for the reliability of the
study when, as in this case, the purpose of the study is to investigate psychological phenomena where excluding external noise is critical (Lynch 1982). For this reason, most articles published in prominent marketing journals use student samples. The course was a consumer behavior course and it is unlikely that the subject of the course would influence the results relating to the purpose of the study. Participants were shown a color-picture featuring a travel destination (mountain, beach and turquoise sea) and an associated story. Following Van de Ven et al. (2011a), in the story, the participants were asked to imagine themselves working on a common school project together with a fellow student attending the same University. The story stated that during the first day of cooperation, the fellow student mentions coming back from a two week long vacation in Brazil with his/her friends and s/he starts to talk about all the things s/he has experienced. Next, participants answered a series of questions and their level of envy (Van de Ven et al. 2011a) and narcissism (Raskin and Terry 1988).
Hypothesis 1 proposed that narcissistic authority, superiority, exploitativeness and entitlement would be positively associated with malicious envy and negatively related to benign envy. The results show that authority is negatively related to benign envy (β = -.183, t = 1.38, p <.10). Entitlement was positively related to both benign envy (β = .211, t = 1.94, p <.05) and malicious envy (β = .416, t = 4.49, p <.01). Exploitativeness was negatively related to benign envy (β = -.250, t = 2.13, p <.01). These results provide partial support for hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 proposed that exhibitionism would be positively associated with benign envy, and negatively associated with malicious envy. The results show that exhibitionism was negatively related to malicious envy (β = -.264, t = 2.63, p <.01), thus partially supporting hypothesis 2.
Our results show that authority and exploitativeness reduced benign envy, while exhibitionism reduced malicious envy. In turn, entitlement increased both benign and malicious envy. Although there was a negative relationship between exploitativeness, authority and benign envy, these components were not associated with malicious envy. In conclusion, marketers face even more narcissistic consumers and evidence suggests that narcissistic components differently impacts benign and malicious envy. We call for more research on the potential benefits and drawbacks of narcissistic components and their effects for marketers. To date, empirical research on narcissistic related phenomena has been scarce and from a marketing point-of-view relatively one-sided.
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