Collective narcissism: Political consequences of investment of self-worth into an ingroup’s image.

This article proposes a new theoretical framework for the reviewed state-of-the-art research on collective narcissism–the belief that the ingroup’s exceptionality is not sufficiently appreciated by others. Collective narcissism is interpreted as the investment of an undermined sense of self-esteem into the belief in the ingroup’s entitlement to privilege. Collective narcissism lies in the hard of populist rhetoric. The belief in ingroup’s exceptionality compensates for a lack of self-worth, leaving collective narcissists hyper-vigilant to signs of threat to the ingroup’s position. People endorsing the collective narcissistic belief are prone to biased perceptions of intergroup situations and to conspiratorial thinking. They retaliate to imagined provocations against the ingroup but sometimes overlook real threats. They are prejudiced and hostile. Deficits in emotional regulation, hostile attribution bias and vindictiveness lie behind the robust link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility. Interventions that support the regulation of negative emotions, such as experiencing self-transcendent emotions, decrease the link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility and offer further insights into the nature of collective narcissism.