Humor style mediates the association between pathological narcissism and self-esteem Virgil Zeigler-Hill a,⇑ , Avi Besser b,⇑ a Department of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi, 118 College Drive #5025, Hattiesburg, MS 39406, USA b Department of Behavioral Sciences, Center for Research in Personality, Life Transitions, and Stressful Life Events, Sapir Academic College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon 79165, Israel article info Article history: Received 29 November 2010 Received in revised form 26 January 2011 Accepted 6 February 2011 Available online xxxx Keywords: Narcissism Grandiose Vulnerable Humor styles Self-esteem abstract The aim of the present study was to examine whether humor styles mediated the associations between the pathological forms of narcissism (grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism) and self-esteem in a sample of Israeli undergraduates (N = 200). Grandiose narcissism was positively associated with the use of adaptive humor (i.e., self-enhancing humor and affiliative humor), whereas vulnerable narcissism was negatively associated with the use of adaptive humor and positively associated with the use of maladap- tive humor (i.e., self-defeating humor and aggressive humor). These forms of humor were found to medi- ate the associations between the pathological forms of narcissism and self-esteem. Findings are discussed in terms of the role that humor may play in the self-esteem regulation of individuals with pathological narcissism. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Narcissism is a complex and multifaceted construct that blends feelings of grandiosity with a heightened sensitivity to experiences that threaten their inflated feelings of self-worth (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). A number of studies have examined the link be- tween narcissism and self-esteem and have shown that the corre- lation between the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1979, 1981; Raskin & Terry, 1988) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE; Rosenberg, 1965) is generally around 0.26 (see Brown and Zeigler-Hill (2004), for a review). This correla- tion is often significant but it is surprisingly low considering how easy it would be for narcissists to claim high levels of self-esteem on a direct self-report measure such as the RSE. The association between narcissism and self-esteem is further complicated by the fact that there is both a normal form of narcissism and a pathological form of narcissism (Miller & Camp- bell, 2008; Pincus et al., 2009). The normal form of narcissism has been the focus of social-personality psychologists who have conceptualized narcissism as a normally distributed personality feature that has adaptive properties (e.g., extraversion) as well as maladaptive properties (e.g., feelings of entitlement; see Miller and Campbell (2008) or Pincus and Lukowitsky (2010), for extended discussions). This form of narcissism is most often cap- tured by the NPI. In contrast, clinical psychologists generally con- sider narcissism in terms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) which is associated with an array of maladaptive outcomes including arrogance, lack of empathy, a willingness to exploit oth- ers, and emotional instability. New assessment tools such as the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI; Pincus et al., 2009) have been developed in recent years to measure the more pathological form of narcissism which is not adequately captured by the NPI. Although the pathological form of narcissism captured by the PNI is considered to be largely maladaptive, the PNI has been used suc- cessfully in both non-clinical and clinical samples to predict out- comes related to pathological narcissism (e.g., Pincus et al., 2009). Pathological narcissism consists of both a grandiose and a vulnerable form (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010). Grandiose narcis- sism is the most easily recognized form of pathological narcissism because its pattern of self-aggrandizement, exploitation, and exhibitionism is consistent with the diagnostic criteria for NPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In contrast, the vulnera- ble form of pathological narcissism is characterized by poor self-regulation which results in self-criticism, negative affective experiences, and interpersonal problems. Although the NPI gener- ally has a positive correlation with measures of self-esteem (e.g., Brown & Zeigler-Hill, 2004), the grandiose and vulnerable forms of pathological narcissism captured by the PNI have been found to have either no association (i.e., grandiose narcissism) or a negative association with self-esteem measures (i.e., vulnerable narcissism; Pincus et al., 2009). This pattern of results suggests that 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.02.006 ⇑ Corresponding authors. Tel.: +1 601 266 4596; fax: +1 601 266 5580 (V. Zeigler-Hill), tel.: +972 8 6802869; fax: +972 8 6610783 (A. Besser). E-mail addresses: virgil@usm.edu (V. Zeigler-Hill), besser@mail.sapir.ac.il (A. Besser). Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2011) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid Please cite this article in press as: Zeigler-Hill, V., & Besser, A. Humor style mediates the association between pathological narcissism and self-esteem. Personality and Individual Differences (2011), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.02.006