After a wrong you can react in many ways. There are those who try to clarify, those who ruminate for weeks and those who simply stop looking for the other person. In a small clinical study, the traits of antagonistic narcissism were especially linked to this last reaction: more avoidance, less benevolence and a lower willingness to forgive. Revenge, the one imagined and perhaps calmly prepared, appeared less clearly.
The study, published in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatryinvolved 102 adult women followed in a German psychosomatic clinic. The researchers used questionnaires and computer tests to understand whether certain antagonistic traits were associated with how the participants reacted to insults. The work measures tendencies: it does not allow you to distribute diagnoses to relatives, partners and exes after a particularly unpleasant discussion.
The name is harder than the explanation. With antagonistic narcissism, psychologists indicate a set of characteristics linked to hostility, a sense of having the right to special treatment, a tendency to devalue or exploit others and defensive reactions when one’s image is called into question. These traits can be present with different intensities. A test result alone does not equate to narcissistic personality disorder.
When resentment takes the form of distance
To study forgiveness, researchers separated reactions that we tend to lump into the same cauldron in life. It’s one thing to want revenge. Another is to avoid those who have hurt us. Yet another is being able to maintain a certain goodwill towards him.
Participants with stronger automatic associations between self and antagonistic traits showed greater avoidance, less benevolence, and a lower willingness to forgive. The link remained visible even after considering what they had consciously stated in the questionnaires. The two instruments, therefore, seemed to capture different parts of the same reaction.
With revenge something different happened. The antagonistic traits stated in the questionnaires were associated with greater vindictive motivation. The test on automatic associations, once those responses were considered, did not provide an equally solid result.
The authors propose a possible explanation. Distancing yourself or stopping looking at the other person with kindness can be a quick reaction. A planned revenge requires other steps: thinking about it, building a strategy and deciding to put it into practice. It is a reading of the results, not proof that the mind always follows this path.
A stopwatch
The less immediate part of the study concerns the Implicit Association Testabbreviated to IAT. Words belonging to different categories appear on the screen and the person must classify them by pressing some keys. If two categories are matched faster, the test registers a more accessible and automatic association between them.
In the questionnaires we have time to think, correct ourselves and choose the answer we think is most suitable. In speed tests this space narrows. Researchers also use them because characteristics such as hostility, exploitation of others and a sense of superiority rarely end up in the list of qualities that we willingly talk about.
However, the IAT remains a chronometer, not an x-ray of the mind. It does not reveal secret intentions, does not tell what happened during a relationship and does not predict with certainty how a person will act. It can accompany questionnaires and add information; alone leaves out almost the entire story. The same authors present indirect measures as an integration of traditional assessments.
Forgiving does not mean reopening the door
Here we need to clear up a misunderstanding. In the study, forgiveness is a set of scores derived from questionnaires and reaction times. In life it is a much more cumbersome word.
Forgiveness can mean stopping letting a wrong occupy your every thought, while still maintaining your distance. A person can end a relationship to protect themselves without possessing particular narcissistic traits. She may also remain close to someone and continue to harbor anger. The study does not establish who should forgive, who should reconcile, or when a door should be left closed.
The researchers also observed no arguments, apologies, separations or rapprochements. They collected responses and reaction times in just one phase of the research. They cannot therefore say that antagonistic narcissism causes difficulty in forgiving. They can only show that, in that sample, the two things appeared together.
One hundred and two patients do not tell all of us
The sample was small, entirely female, and came from a psychosomatic clinic. The findings cannot be automatically extended to men, all women or the general population. We will need studies with more diverse people and observed over time, possibly comparing the tests with what really happens in their relationships.
The type of offense, its seriousness and the history shared with the person who committed it are also missing. Being ignored for an evening, experiencing betrayal, or leaving a harmful relationship are not interchangeable experiences, even when a questionnaire tries to place them in the same column.
For now, the result is that in this group of patients, the implicit antagonism appeared above all in the gesture of moving away and in taking away benevolence, rather than in preparing a revenge. The test measured a few milliseconds. What had happened before and whether that door really deserved to be reopened was left out.
