appears to be most commonly a result of threatened gotismwthat is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's uperi-ority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating

form of self-regard affected displaced aggression, which was low in general. These findings contradict the popular view that low self-esteem causes aggression and point instead toward threatened egotism as an important cause. How do people's thoughts and feelings about themselves influence

ABSTRACT—Research has found that narcissists behave aggressively when they receive a blow to their ego. The current studies examined whether narcissistic aggression could be reduced by inducing a unit relation between the target of aggression and the aggressor. Experimental participants were told that they shared either a birthday (Study 1) or a fingerprint type (Study 2) with a partner. Control participants were not given any information in-dicating similarity to their partner. Before aggression was measured, the partners criticized essays written by the participants. Aggression was measured by allowing par-ticipants to give their partner loud blasts of noise through a pair of headphones. In the control groups, narcissists were especially aggressive toward their partner. However, narcissistic aggression was completely attenuated, even under ego threat, when participants believed they shared a key similarity with their partner. When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. —Bernard Bailey (The Quotations Page, 1994–2005) Individuals with inflated egos think they are the center of the universe. Unfortunately, such individuals also become aggres-sive when they are criticized or rejected by others (e.g., Bush-

violent acts, including many in which the harmful consequences were not intended. Third, threatened egotism entails that one 'sfavorable view ofself(orpublic image) has been attacked, and violent responses are directed toward the source ofthis attack. Relevant individual differences (respec

-get of $70 million in 1966 to construct a nuclear power facility. This relatively small initial commitment snow-balled by 1989 into expenditures of $5.5 billion—for a plant that never became operational (Ross & Staw, 1993). The present research proposes and tests the hypothesis that egotism

ʼ gender. Implicit egotism is partially observed among male participants, thus they boosted their name letter preference after being exposed to a self-threatening task.

for this research is credited to Roy Baumeister (1997) and his work regarding threatened egotism, this work also builds upon the efforts of several researchers including Raskin and Hall (1979) and their construction of the original Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and the forty-item revised form