Narcissistic Personality, Social Phobia, and Needs for Affiliation

Abstract

Previous clinical research has suggested that narcissistic personality and social phobia had common psychological factors and processes. In this research, we conceptualized needs for affiliation as interpersonal orientation, and commonalities and differences between narcissistic personality and social phobia were examined in terms of four different aspects of interpersonal orientation. Two hundreds and ninety nine (299) undergraduates completed a questionnaire, to measure four aspects of interpersonal orientation, narcissistic personality, social phobia, and self-esteem. Results indicated that needs for external evaluation and positive stimulation each had a positive correlation with narcissistic tendency. On the other hand, need for positive stimulation had a negative and need for social approval and external evaluation a positive correlation with social phobic tendency. From these results, along with correlations between subscales of the personality measures, commonalities and differences between narcissistic personality and social phobia were discussed.