How Certain Narcissists Bounce Back from Rejection

Think about the last time you felt rejected by the people around you. Perhaps you arrived at the home of your sister-in-law ready for an enjoyable, socially distanced, afternoon picnic. As you entered the backyard, no one seems to notice your arrival. A few children are playing ball, your older relatives are chatting, and your sister-in-law is deep in conversation with her own sister. After a painful 15 minutes in which you wondered what you were doing there, someone finally greeted you but you still felt snubbed by having been ignored for so long.

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For most people, such experiences create self-doubts as they question whether anyone really cares about them. Eventually, though, the pain and hurt subside, particularly if something happens that negates the original experience of rejection. Your sister-in-law may very well apologize for having not greeted you when you arrived, explaining that something else was going on that required her attention.

When the person experiencing rejection is high in a certain form of narcissism, though, the scenario may unfold very differently. According to Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Michal Weiss and Jonathan Huppert (2021), the grandiose type of narcissist is known to respond to rejection with “self-enhancement, dismissiveness, and devaluation of the source of threat” (p. 2). Those high in vulnerable narcissism, in contrast, respond to rejection with self-deprecation and feelings of being victimized.

The “Mask Model of Narcissism” and Responses to Rejection

A theoretical question running through the decades of scientific work on narcissism is whether grandiose narcissism is actually an elaborate cover-up for feelings of inadequacy. This would mean that, at heart, those high in grandiose narcissism are disguising high levels of vulnerable narcissism. Inwardly, those with grandiose narcissism would respond to rejection with the same levels of pain and suffering as those high in vulnerable narcissism, even if their outward behavior suggests otherwise.

This line of reasoning is behind what’s called the “Mask Model” developed by University of South Florida’s Jennifer Bosson and colleagues (2008). Grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism, in this approach, “may represent two manifestations, or two regulation strategies, of the same underlying sense of worthlessness and inferiority” (p. 1).

To peer behind the mask of those high in grandiose narcissism, the Israeli research team compared their outward (explicit) and inward (implicit) reactions (called “interpretation bias” or “IB”) to experimentally-induced situations involving social rejection. If the Mask Model was supported, people high in grandiose narcissism would show the same implicit IB as those high in vulnerable narcissism after an experience involving rejection. Masking that implicit IB would be an explicit IB, in which the grandiose narcissistic individuals slough off those negative experiences.