It predicted what we thought you would so outlook derogation into your hostility, tendency to aggress towards especially when threatened, the tendency to develop conspiratorial conspiracy theories about the thread and enemies.
In this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I have a very stimulating discussion with doctor Agneshka Julik de Zavala about collective narcissism. Agneshka defines collective narcissism as a belief that the exaggerated greatness of one's group is not sufficiently recognized by others. In this episode, we dive deep into the many implications of this way of thinking, from politics to fake news, to conspiracy theories to the rise of populism
seen around the world. We also discuss some potential ways of reducing collective narcissism and bringing greater solidarity among all humans, regardless of which ones you perceive as in your quote in group. I find this line of research extremely important, as I wrote about in my Atlantic article what collective narcissism does to society. I think this is a really
important episode with many societal implications. So that further ado I bring you Agneshka Julik de Zavala Agneshka, it's so great to have you on this psychology podcast.
Hi Scott, Hello, it's very nice to be here.
Finally, Yes, finally, but I have a longtime follower of your work and congratulations on your new book. How are you feeling about about the book?
Yeah, it's been a while since it's been published. It was the end of last year, so you know, you know, the writing happened much earlier, so I was excited while I was doing it. Now it's there and it feels like okay, so now it's let's just see how it is received. I just really had that need to put it out there. I thought it was important to summarize that research because it's quite burgeoning right now. It's coming
up a lot. It seems to be relevant to a lot of different aspects of societal problems that we are experiencing. So collective narcissism seems to be a phenomenon that can explain why people vote for autra conservative populist while people support policies that ultimately will hurt their descendants and the earth. While they support policies that hurt themselves or the group
members to which they belong. So I think it's quite relevant and it's important to describe this phenomenon as we understand it.
Quite wide ranging in its implications. Let's take a step back for a moment now, So you study something called collective narcissism. Can you explain a little bit to our audience? What is collective narcissism? How do you define it?
Right? So this is the book. It explains what it is. So it's I'll do my best to explain in a couple of words, but you know, we can take an hour to try to explain it.
How do you define it?
Yeah, well, I define it as a manifestation of narcissistic need on a collective level of self, which means, in other words, that it's the belief that the superiority and greatness of our group should be but it's not sufficiently recognized by others. So it's this entitlement and deserving of special recognition and privilege that is digest and the core of the concept.
Got it? How did this interest come to be? What's the what was the sort of development of your interest in this topic?
Ah? Right, So you know, let's start from the very beginning, when I was a little girl in a communist Poland.
Yeah, what was it like when you grew up in communist pawn Yeah, I'm curious. Well yeah, well were you interested in psychology? Were you interested in people as a kid?
Okay, scoot, this is a coming out. I'm never divergent. I'm interested in people intellectually. I suppose that's why I studied psychology. But it came from the need to understand because I had problems with relating to people. And I think, and I think, now it's actually fine. I understand it now. You know, it's just like the huge better than was taken of my back. I understood that, you know, but
see that. But this is also it comes from trying to understand things that I just didn't understand why it was happening. So I suppose I was really bothered by public expressions of hate. You know, I was so growing up in communists ponland. What happens? Well, first of all, you would meet violence a lot, and as from the workers type of district, I suppose, you know, like something that you would call inner city. Now, so that was one thing, but I was much more scared on the violence,
politicized violence. Violence on a large scale performed by groups and societies. So when you're growing up in the communist spoonand you are like about maybe eleven years old and you're taking to ouspitz and that scares you, scar scars you for life, you know. So I suppose that's that's what made me completely confused about people. And I wanted to understand why that things like that can be perpetrated
by people. And you know, actually, this term collective narcissism first appeared in the literature in the writings of the Frankfurt School scholars Soda Dorna Riich from These were German scholars of Jewish origin who were studying why hit there was so popular that the rising popularity of Nazi Party in the twenties and thirties, they managed to immigrate, you know, sort of they understood what was going on, and then they continued in states. So I didn't know when I
came up with this, Ah, narcissism can be collective. I didn't actually know that this term was already existed, because although it's in their writings, it's not. It didn't make it to psychology as much as author Italian personality, for example, or escape from Freedom did but so I had to have some parts trans translated from German. Actually when I when I found out that the term was actually used by by them, but then a lot of things that they said on that theoretical sort of level white group
narcissism is such a dangerous phenomenon. Then I was able to research, you know, so I was able to actually find empirical evidence that it functions as they predicted that you will function.
Yeah, well that's great. I mean, you know, you know, I love those those those thinkers.
Well that answers your question.
Oh yeah, no, it does well to a certain extent. I know that there's obviously more of the story about I think you were at PEN or something and then you saw you're at some workshop, and isn't there some origin story here?
Yeah? So the more immediate story is that so I was in University of Pennsylvania and I was back in two thousand and five, and it was a summer institute of a nationalistic conflict. It was a great initiative by scholars from Union of pen but also other local institutions I don't remember now, but I got great finding to
bring people together. And these were interesting people because these were social scientists that were interested in complete but they were also client resolution practitioners, so you know, and people who experience conflicte and then try to understand it or try to be advocated. So we had a partisan from Beerma, for example, but we had also people who work with
refugees from conflict. And I had this great colleague, David Gouldwin, who was at the time he worked with refugees as therapists, so he was a clinical psychologist, and we were putting a group together that was supposed to prepare a research project, him and several other people I don't remember now because we had this exchange. Now we're talking about nationalism and how this it is. One of the understanding, the psychological
understanding is that it's this need to dominate other countries. No, and David says, yeah, that the need for superiority. It's just so narcissistic. And I'm like, okay, gone, and he gives me the definition of narcissism at the time as
it was understood in psychology. Narcissism on individual level, right as the personality that's over theer at this complex of grandiosity that makes you completely delusional and makes you like a really difficult person to be with, even if like superficially quite charming in the beginning, then like really revenge full,
like really hostile, dominant, dominating and controlling it inter personal relations. No, so he says, yeah, these are the people who just demand that others admired them all the time, they about their heads, give them the signs of admiration and so on. And I'm here as social psychologists by training, inspired to a large extent by the European social psychology you wear
social identity theory. Of social identity theory perspective is quite prominent, and we know that self has levels, and it has a personal level, but it also has a social or collective level, right, so what do you think about yourself as a group member? Some thinking, okay, so maybe it's not individual narcissism that is important here driving intergroup processes, but rather collective narcissism. So what people think about their groups and how they in that context evaluate the groups.
And then I started researching. Then I came up with ador collective narcissisms in German. Yes I had that translated. And yeah, we started thinking, okay, so why don't we just try to tap it? Why don't you. We try to measure it. So I asked David for measurement of and there's a sistic personality, and then I checked out whatever measurements were used at that time. Uh. And we did very simple things but very much backed up but
very important science. So we translated the measurements of individual narcissism into the collective level by simply substituted I with my group.
So clever, so clever, and yeah, and if any found it, it held psychometrically.
Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I say, is it is? It was done that way, but yes, of course I'm minimizing that. You know, I'm self deprecating here, but I know I don't want to duprecate my colleagues. So there was a lot of work that went into it because there were lots of us. So we discussed that concept. So we did all of the validation work, the face
validity of it. So we gave people the understanding of the cont construct, then the items they were supposed to tell us whether this in eyes of experts in psychology political science can't feel the resolution whever, that seems like the construct that we were trying to measure. And then
we did the psychometric work on it. So we used the scale in large groups of people, shorten it and validated in it in a sort of using the empirical approach, so showing that it correlates with with what it should correlate from theory positively, negatively, that it allows us to group people you know. Yeah, and the most importantly it predicted what we thought it would so outlook relegation, an intergroup hostility, a tendency to aggress towards especially when threatened.
So this is where the very early studies then we found that it predicts the sort of hypersensitivity to fred seeing thread to the group everywhere, the tendency to develop conspiratorial conspiracy theories about the thread and enemies just to have that justification for the hostility and aggression. So these are people who engage in them in that sort of
vicious circle of thread and aggressive retaliation. So collective, we found that collective narcissism predicts a tendency to exaggerate perception of thread to the group, especially to the groups. We found that at the higher level levels of collective narcissism, the retaliation to in group image thread is stronger, more vicious more aggressive, and we found that thread to in group image increases collective narcissism a little bit, but it does temporarily, but it does.
How do you tie a lot of this to social identity theory? What is social identity theory?
Well, social identify the perspective rather brings together social identity theory and self categorization theory. So the historically first is this social identity theory that is proposed by Rita Schwell, another Holocaust survivor whose life work was to explain in the group hatred and prejudice. So he was the author of so called experiments in the minimal group paradigm with a question what does it take people to create in their heads this division between us and them and start
working acting accordingly, so favoring us and disfavoring them. So he was an author of the famous experiments in which he asked people whether they prefer the painting of Paul Clare versus Vasil Kandinsky. There's actually the sort of modern painters, not huge difference between them, but it was sufficient for people to make then biased allocations to the in groups. So let's say you like Porclaire, I like Kandinsky, I
make allocations of money. I'll give more money to those who have Kandinsky than you your group called like proklare No. Those studies showed that people not only would savor their group, but they also would make allocations in which they would want to maximize the difference between the in group and the outgroup. Even if they do not give the biggest money allocation to their group, what they want to do is to make their group put the group in advantage
in comparison to the outgroup. So that was a very important motivation this positive distinctiveness, and tash Felt proposed that this is because we have this universal motive to maintain positive self esteem and because our social identity is a part of our identity. One of the ways of achieving and maintaining positive self esteem is to make making sure that our group is great. So, yeah, developing the positive identity. And one of the ways of developing positive social identity
is by comparison to other groups. So you will be always motivated to det get out groups. So your group comes out in this comparison is better. Yeah.
Why do some people care so much about being part of the group.
It's evolved. We are your trust social species.
Need for belonging.
Yeah, of course, no, of course, Okay, so on very basic, on the very basic level, it's been adopted. You know, we don't have closes, we don't have been So.
My specific question but their individual differences here, Why are some people way more interested in and caring so much about their group being great more so they care about their own damn selves? Why are there some people well and.
Here you know, like get thatthics usually explains most of individual differences, right, So we just are that way. But I think what collective narcissism theory proposes is when it makes why it makes a difference, or how it makes a difference socially. So even if the tendency to hold collective narcissism as I believe about your group is an individual difference, so it will be a normal distribution in
a population. You will always have like twenty percent of zealos, twenty percent of people who don't have it at all, and majority in the middle. That actually does not matter that much for the societal processes that we are observing and from which we started. What matters is that it's a belief about the social identity and you can share it with others. So this is when collective narcissism becomes a bet that is shared with others and starts defining
what people think about the group. This is when it starts being a societal problems. And this is when groups become actors. You know, groups become collectively narcissistic because they decided, okay, we need to make our country great again and recognized again and admired again because it wasn't we sort of agree to this delusionally they believe, and once that believe serves to coordinate people within a group, then it becomes a problem. It becomes a problem.
Yeah, it becomes a big problem.
Your question to why it is so important for people to be good members is a really big question in social psychology. Then various motives that groups address, and my work is particularly interested in narcissistic motive. So a motive to have others recognize your group is better than others. It's also a motive, but people don't write about it that much. So the self esteem is a recognized motive, but narcissism not so much. There's a big literature also
that differentiate self esteem and narcissism. Oh yeah, so yeah, showing that narcissism, which is non positive self.
Estemian, definitely, and they have different developmental trajectories and and and and and and predictors. So what are the are narcisis? Are collective narcissistic groups comprised of individually narcissistic people.
Yeah, I would say no, so this is this is.
But there's a correlation.
There's a correlation, yeah.
But vulnerable narcissism absolutely so.
So there is a relation between individual narcissism and collective narcissism, and there are different aspects of individual narcissism. So there's this grand use narcissism where people are dominant grand use because they feel they're so great. They're just grade in everything. No, and the admiration is just the of others. It's just the right and entitlement. Vulnerable narcissists are. It's a it's
a narcissism of my great suffering. Right, So these are the people who celt deprecate the people who were It's just like their assumption of greatness was not confirmed by others, and therefore they salt and they suffer. So it's this obsession with like how much I'm not recognized for my greatness and how I should be so vulnerable narcissism. Narcissists particularly focus on the lack of refognition that they are doue and I think this also is quite a defining
feature of collective narcissism. So that's the hence the strong link. But you know, I think so. In the book, I put the data from various countries about it, but there is not a good cross cultural work that would look at the link between various aspects of individual narcissism and collective narcissism. I found that the link between vulnerable collective narcissism, vulnerable narcissism on individual level, and collective narcissism is quite strong in Poland, but not so strong, or at least
not so consistently strong in America. And I think it's because we based our claim to our national greatness on different things. You know. So like in Poland we are the greatest nation in the world, US well for various reasons, mostly well, like we suffered so much through our history. We are like a Christ of the nation nations. We suffered for salvation and betterment of other nations. That that's the sort of narration. While in America I suppose that's
not the main point. You're just the greatest because you do things and you're so efficient and you survive on Mars and yeah area, so it's argentic, it's grand duous. So hence this relationship in America might be stronger. Nevertheless, the fact that the two are related, that does not mean that collectively narcissist. The groups are the groups where you have a lot of individual narcissis actually, so you know, one thing that we found very early on was that
collective nurses predicts intergroup phenomena. Individual narcissism does not, or does it through collective narcissism. So, for example, when it comes to intergroup aggression and hostility, it's collective narcissism that predicts it, not individual narcissism. Why collective narcissism does not predict interpersonal hostility, which individual narcissism predicts very very strongly and robustly. So they just function on different levels. Yeah,
they predict the attitudes and behaviors on different levels. So that's one thing. The other thing is that individual narcissists are about their own greatness, so they use groups instrumentally well. Collective narcissists as well. But with individual narcissism, it's not like, Okay, so I am great and I belong to great groups. When my group is not great, then I will belong to that bit that is great or it is currently recognized.
Yeah, hold on, there's a distinction I've never seen you make, but it seems worth making between vulnerably narcissistic groups and grandiosely narcissistic groups.
I don't make this distinction, you.
Know, I know. I just said I've never seen you make that distinction, but I think it's an important distinction. Well, the reason why I think it's an important distinction is because I do think there's different flavors. There are some groups who have this flavor of like, we have suffered so much, that's why we're great, whereas other groups are. We are great because we're inherently the best.
Yeah, I mean, it's always we are inherently the best. So collective narcissism is related to a tendency to escension like a group as well. So it comes from by our nature, our blood always. But yeah, absolutely, so, I don't differentiate. What I'm saying Scott is group members can take any reason to claim that the group is unique, superior, better than others. Sure they are, they can be nations
that are. They would say, well, we're just the most genderous nation in the world with the most empathetic We always help others, right, and that's why we are due with special accomnition respect and we are not getting it, and please give it to us as soon as possible.
Or so interesting you you make a distinction in your book between kind of right wing authoritarianism and left wing authoritarianism, or or you know, you have this very you have this specific argument about like when like underprivileged groups show collective narcissism, it's it's a little bit different than when the dominant group shows collective narcissism. Can you elaborate your thinking on that a little bit?
Yeah, I have to elaborate it separately, Okay, because I'm not sure this are related. And actually you gave me an idea to think about.
Thank you.
I will tell you because I'm now writing that paper I told you. I came here to write the paper. It's a paper about collective narcissism being national, collective narcissism being related simultaneously to right wing and left wing authoritarianism. Yeah, yes, but let me leave this aside, because actually the other topic will serve as an introduction just in case I forget left wing authoritism to remind so one thing that
I should say. The early research on collective narcissism focused a lot on national narcissism, mostly because it was easier. But in the very first paper I published on that topic, there was a study in which we looked at ethnic collective narcissism. So this was a study that was conducted I think in like two thousand and six maybe in Britain,
just just after that memorable meetings at Pennsylvania. And here we asked black and white British participants to answer the collective narcissism scale with reference to the ethnic group, and then we measured symbolic racism and racism denial, and we found that white collective narcissists would report higher symbolic racism and with deny that racism in the UK exists. Right, Why Black collective narcissists would report lower bodied racism and
would claim that racism in UK exists. Yeah, So those findings were then a bit forgotten because we concentrated on showing various predictions predictors that collective narcissism makes, and that's sort of normalogical network of collective narcissism and other forms of thinking about your own group. So all of this validation sort of work and how it this concept is
valid and important. But then mostly because of the prominence of social protests that happened in last last several years, we looked into this again and it was actually done by various relapse in independently because you know, I told you that since I proposed a scale, and the theory picked up, and various people are doing this in various
places in the world. So we had studies, for example, that would that would continue this idea that collective narcissism predicts thinking something is a prejudice if it's done to your group, but if your group does the same to another group, is not prejudiced anymore. Yeah. So there's a colleague of mine showed something like that on again with
British blacks and whites and also men and women. Yeah, so it looks like collective narcissism makes different predictions depends on what group we're talking about, and it will also make a different idea prediction for different support for different ideologies. Oh wow, So so what we found out for example, that collective narcissism the historically disadvantage groups, right, so ethnic minorities, women,
that we measure it somewhere else. I think that's where the groups that we studied it is related to a garitarianism, right, rejection of ethnic, racial, or gender inequality, and the tendency to pursue collective action for greater equality. So, for example, black collective narcissists would report higher higher tendency to engage in Black Lives Matter protests, or they would report that they engaged, and women who were high on gender collective
narcissism would also go in protest for gender equality. When it comes to the historically advantage groups is the opposite. So collectively narcissistic men would not react to exclusion of women emotionally almost at all. They would be buffed by exclusion of men, but not exclusion of women. They would be sexist, and they would also endorse beliefs that legitimize
gender inequality or believes that deny gender inequality exists. And it's analogous when it comes to white collective narcissists, so they would endorse their beliefs about white supremacy, they would deny that racism exists, they would uphold prejudice, and so on. So very much predictions of collective narcissism in advantage disadvantaged
groups depend on those groups particular interests. Really, And what's interesting also that I need to say is that in both groups, though advantage disadvantage, collective narcissism predicts hostility and predicts zero some thinking about the relationships between those groups. So it is a variable that predicts conflict. It is a variable that, ultimately, even if we're talking in disadvantage groups, ultimately can lead to aggression to top or flip the
hierarchy rather than introduce equality. And there are there is research that's been done in various countries in the world that struggle with terrorist movements that show that collective narcissism, especially in radicalized networks, predict support for terrorism as a way of a weaker or disadvantage group engaging in the
power struggle. So this is one thing that shows us that collective narcissism would make different behavioral predictors, predictions and predict different ideologies depending on which group we ask about. But now the coming back to our largest body of
evidence is the national narcissism. And people would would tend to think, oh, you know, like that this argument about and recognized greatness of our nation, there is a very sort of ultra conservative right doing argument populist perhaps, but yeah, the associated with the ultra conservative populism, the one that
argues that, yeah, we need to achieve our greatness. But coming back to black age, the dark ages, Yeah, like the grangeos ideal, idealized past that didn't exist, right, So that and and and actually there's lots of research that would show that, for example, the supporters of those utra conservative politicians have a higher national narcissism that supporters are more liberal or centrist politicians. So there is one finding
that you see in the literature. But the other one is that we've been lately dealing with is with this concept of right wing and left wing autorianism, and this is national narcissism. So we keep group constant here. We don't don't mess up with group membership. It's just we always measure national narcissism and uh, and then we measure ideology ideological beliefs. So we measure whether people identify as left liberal, conservatives and then we ask them the questions
about right and left wing conservatism. So maybe it's time to explain what those phenomena are the way we approach leaders and the group norms. This is what they have in common. So the right wing the authoritarianism is a
cluster of authoritarian submission, conventionalism, and authoritarian aggression. So these are attitudes that it's a reverence for authorities, especially the authorities that are coursive and defined by power, sticking to the norms and being punitive towards those who don't, and then engaging in aggression to punish devians and to punish those who authorities indicate should be punished. Right when autogenism is a variable that is conceptualized as a need for
order and stability. So what's behind it is this fear that if we don't have the those authorities and norms, then yeah, the bad things will will happen. So it's really a tendency to maintain existing uh social systems, while left auto dignity is actually the opposite. It's it's an argument.
Towards uh chaosts.
Yeah, so like you need to follow your leaders and norm groups. But the purpose is to destroy the system. Yeah, to change the system too well, to bring down those who rule right, and to destroy existing hierarchies. And now the association of collective narcissism we've both is interesting and worrism. Yeah, so those two types of authoritarianism are either negatively associated or not associated. And now you have the finding in which this particular way of thinking about the group and
those one or the other. For me, that means that collective narcissism represent the readiness to follow the more ruthless leader, the leader. So we can these are people who will go, Okay, we follow this leader. They're established leader in the system in which we function as long as the system serves
our privileged, serves our entitled group entitlements. But as soon as another leader emerges and shows us a way to better serve our group entitlements, even for destruction of what exists, even through World War, then we go for this leader. And it's really the preference for the better justification of ruthlessness and aggression really what the thing matters. And to add on to this, we also found that that national narcissism is related to anti establishment orientation, and that is
an orientation that is orthogonal to left and right. It's it's not related. It's just support systems. Don't support system.
Now now both both to me, suck? Is there? Like a is there?
Like?
Is there such thing as secure collective healthy collect is there? Does that exist? Healthy collective value?
God?
Not non narcissistic?
Okay, I mean, come on, I started from Auschwitz, so it's yeah, it's abomination. So I started from being interested in extreme and relatively rare. Yeah, So the mobilization of collective narcissism happens historically, but it does not really happen often. We seem to write a history for wars, so we think it's it's a very frequent happening, but it is actually no more avoidable, and we engage in that. But it's definitely the sort of belief that that helps societies
in conflict and helps societies to get to conflict. But there are other aspects of in glubidentification, and there are other aspects of positive in glob identification, So there are other aspects of positive evaluation of your own group. So at some point we mentioned the distinction between self esteem and narcissism. You can love you yourself, you can demand
that other recognize your greatness. Two different things, but they're related with the fact that you generally have a positive opinion about yourself or at least express it on a surface. So similar with collective narcissism, there is a non narcissistic in group positivity possible and actually differentiating collective narcissism made us appreciated because as with self estimate nacialism, those things
are positively related, so they have an overlap. Yeah, so there is I tend to name to name this variable in group satisfaction. It has been also labeled collective self esteem, but it goes down to two feelings. Yeah. It is a feeling of satisfaction of being a member and pride of being a member of a valuable group. Yeah. So it's not narcissistic demands for this group to be recognized as better, have any special entitlements of privileges. You're just
happy you're a member of a valuable collective. Yeah. But the fact of you positively evaluating your group and collective overlaps with collective narcissism. That positive yogle upset and takes it further with this entirement and recognition issues. But when you measure one and the other in the same study.
You can actually tease a lot of things out. So we have statistical methods that help us deal with the what these variables have in common and sort of look at what they predict when you take this common thing from them. So, in other words, we can get this collective narcissism without the happiness of being a member of the of the great group, and we have the genuine collective self esteem that is not narcissistic. And study after
study we show that they predict opposite things. So collective narcissism without in group satisfaction is related to low selves and individual narcissism. The non narcissistic inproup positivity is related to high self esteem and negatively to narcissism. Right, so on individual level, those already are different types of people. Then in satisfaction without collective narcissism protecting integroup tolerance. So the fact that they overlap actually attenuates the hostility of
collective narcissisms. Wow wow. So one thing that I take out of it is because they appear together, so like you have more people that have both, then you have people that have just collective narcissism or just in group satisfaction. Yeah, so in a way you can capitalize on this overlap and to address collective narcissis, especially especially on a group level.
That is possible because you could imagine groups. Maybe ourselves are a little bit like that, but it's much more obvious in groups that they members of groups talk, they negotiate. They all the time sort of agree what they should think about reality, what they should think about the group. So they negotiate also what it means to be a
member of this given group. So you have your Republicans and Democratic right simple system in which they discuss what it means to be American, and they have quite different visions quite often, not especially now, I guess. So then whoever sells the vision to the voters would make this
vision normative and dominant. If you make collective narcissism win, then you have collective narcissistic clitics and the consequences of Yeah, it's like social polarization or fake news and conspiratorial theories and so on. But if you make in group satisfaction over collective narcissism, you would have people who are orientated
towards making the collective that they highly value better and happier. Yeah, and there's actually research that shows that collective narcissism would predict support for politics that ultimately hurt in group members, but in group satisfaction without collective narcissism would predict the
rejection of politics that would hurt in group members. So that there was actually COVID pandemic was a context in which lots of studies on collective narcissism were run, for example, to demonstrate those sort of very different behavior and they're very different attitudes towards the in group members and for
collective predicted by collective narcissism and in group satisfaction. So, because defining the in group business society is a social process is a process of negotiation, the way of attenuating the negative consequences of collective narcissism will be to make the positive, non narcissistic in group satisfaction prevail in this negotiation. I hope that makes sense. I don't know exactly how to do it, but I'm sure there are ways.
Yeah, well, if you can figure that out, you should want a Nobel prize. But look, I think that's a very important project. And I would also add on to that, we need to find a way for multiple groups to not see themselves as competing with each other. There not, not all groups have to compete with each other. We have to find some way where there can be a coexistence.
But absolutely we survived for cooperation rather. But I wanted to say one more thing is good when it comes to attenuating negative consequences of collective narcissism. Things that I kind of am bringing together with what I just said to you. As a project, we had research that shows that mindfulness is one way that also attend you it's collective narcissistic hostility. So this is a very different kind of intervention. Huh. Then then focusing on in group satisfaction,
but it works in the same way. So when we when we train people in mindfulness skills, that reduced the link between elective narcissism and prejudice across like six different forms of prejudice that we measure. Very difficult study. It was just published in Psychological Science. Some very graduation. Absolutely and I but but you know, there is something about that that is already recognized. So like I've read that
British politicians actually participated in mindfulness trainings. There is there is a group in Britain that that or as an mindfulness institute that organized that and does research. So the political importance of being mindful and not very active is recognized, and I think the research coming from from my lab would suggest that, yeah, more work here should be done. Even if it's individual level intervention, it seems to have the profound society.
I think to be a part of DEI programs, it should be should.
Should be. Yeah, should you qualify you to be to be a politician? Right? You have to you have to pass smart.
Well, you you you found you found mindfulness? You haven't you found some other factors too, like self compassion.
No, yeah, so so this is yeah, but here we would go into the literature and mindfulness that is it's so complex. But so mindfulness has this understanding or meaning of like focusing or managing your attention to focus on the present. But the mindfulness studies actually show that it is important on what you focus on.
Yeah, so it's true, it's true.
No, but Lis said, some mindfulness interventions are just like
you focus on managing your attention or your focus. But the other say, and then on your you pay attention to your emotions and you choose to pay attention to emotions that are pro social or self transcendent suggess, gratitude, or compassion or loving kindness in our in our research, it was particularly gratitude because we figured that it would be the least difficult for collective narcissist to process because they there's also research that shows that collective narcissism is
related to negative emotionality, lots of self criticism, low self compassion, So self compassion and passion might be difficult emotions for collective narcissist. So with focus on gratitude and specifically the mindful mindful how did we call it mindful gratitude training as opposed to just attention intervention work. It's the content of emotions that we experience is very important and can
actually break the linked in collective narcissism and hostility. And this is also what I wanted to say about the disadvantage groups. Okay, because members of these advantage groups, they of course experience very difficult experience of being the tempered discrimination, but through collective action, they also have access to a lot of self transcended emotions because collective action is the
action of solidarity. So that also I was saying that. Yeah, collective narcissists in those advantage groups would in fact want to flick the hierarchy rather than really work for equality. They are still aggressive and have the as and the divisions, but also they would be experiencing pro social self transcendent
emotions which may tempare the hostility. So collective narcissists that went through experience of collective action and that feeling of solidarity and achievements for collective action may be very different collective.
Oh wow, yes, yes.
But yeah, the problem is the what the collective action is met with. Yes, so the response of the advantage groups is important because that the crashing of protests only that decalyzes collective narcissists.
Yeah, yes, yes, your your work is so important and relevant in the world today. It seems to me like collective narcissism is synonymous with collective victimhood. I would almost use the two almost synonymously with each other. I think they were.
Research that show show that they related. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a great intuition because thank you. But there you go thinking for the very concept and what I was saying in the beginning. These are people who see enemies everywhere. Everyone is against them and conspires against them and hates them. So yeah, they are the ultimate victims.
It makes a lot of sense. And and we're not gonna pull out of this quagmire we're in society right now unless people and groups start viewing each other not as any means, but but as something as at least neutral a look.
At least we identified one big factor that makes them, that makes Siency a person enemies, and we can now work on this factor.
It's a great start. It's a great well, it's it's it's more than a start. Well, congratulate, congratulations on your book, and tell people the name of your book and where they can buy it.
Okay, right. It is called the Psychology of Collective Narcissism The Insights from Social Identity Perspective. It's published by Ratledge, and it's open. It's available in open access, So if you google the Psychology of Collective Narcissism Ratledge, you can find a link to the open access so you don't have to buy anything. You can just download it and yeah, check it out.
Wonderful. It's an academic book, but it is very valuable and I think a lot of people would still be able to understand it even if they're not scientists.
I think so. But I'm actually working on something more.
Has something in the in the pots you stir in there? She got something she's stirring in the podcast. Okay, well we'll have to look out for that.
Yeah, yes, and I would ask you for advice.
Well, I'd be happy to. You know, I'm a big fan of yours. I'm a big fan. I wrote about you in the Atlantic. I wrote about you in the Atlantic.
Yeah, that was so great.
Well, thank you for coming on my podcast.
The emailing me frantically on my Greek holidays, I remember, I loved I mean, they were so great.
I wish academic journals were so detailed this time.
Yeah, the corpywriters were working for them. Thank you. It was intense, It was that was an intense project, to be honest. But thanks for you so much for your help. Yeah, thank you so much for your help.
And well, thank you for inviting me. Scott.
My pleasure.