Early family experiences, narcissistic traits and adjustment in emerging adulthood
Early family experiences, narcissistic traits and adjustment in emerging adulthood

Summary/Abstract: Exposure to risky family environment during childhood affects diverse mental health outcomes in adulthood. Recent studies have found associations between narcissistic personality traits and retrospective accounts of early experiences.However, it is important to distinguish between two forms of narcissism: the grandiose (characterized by grandiosity, aggression, and dominance) and the vulnerable narcissism (characterized by a defensive and insecure grandiosity that obscures the feelings of inadequacy, incompetence and negative affect) because some aspects of narcissism are more strongly related to psychological well being than others. Therefore, our goal was to examine the relationship between early risky family experiences, individual’s narcissistic traits and adjustment inemerging adulthood. Moreover, we wanted to examine narcissistic vulnerabilityand grandiosity as possible mediators between early risky family experiences and current adjustment (well being and distress). Data were collected on a total of 348university students in Croatia (294 females, Mage = 21.57, SD = 2.91) in an online study. The hypothesized mediation model was tested using path analysis andshowed good fit to the data. Early risky family experiences positively predictedboth grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, and also directly negatively predicted one’s personal well being and positively one’s distress. Furthermore, vulnerable narcissism positively predicted distress and negatively predicted one’s wellbeing,while grandiose narcissism did not predict any indicator of adjustment. Therefore,the hypothesis regarding the mediating role of narcissistic traits was only partly confirmed. In sum, the results show theoretically meaningful connections between psychological adjustment, narcissistic traits and early experiences, reiterating the importance of distinguishing between two forms of narcissism.

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