People in individualistic societies may not be the most narcissistic. And the United States is not the country with the highest rate of narcissism, new research has found.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Self and Identity, looked at narcissism in more than 45,000 people across 53 countries.
Contrary to popular assumptions, they found that people in collectivist societies like China had higher narcissism overall than those in individualistic societies, like the United States.
Here are the top 10 countries this study found had the highest overall levels of narcissism, in order from greatest to least:
- Germany
- Iraq
- China
- Nepal
- South Korea
- Turkey
- Nigeria
- Bangladesh
- Pakistan
- Romania
The countries with the lowest overall levels of narcissism were Serbia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark, with Serbia having the least narcissism.
The United States ranked 16th highest out of 53 countries studied.
The researchers also found that people in collectivist countries with higher gross domestic products (GDP) per person tended to have higher levels of narcissism.
Types of narcissism they measured
To understand this study a little deeper, you need to know a few key concepts: narcissism, narcissistic admiration, and narcissistic rivalry.
What is narcissism?
Narcissism is a tendency to think and act in ways that are self-important, entitled, and arrogant, with low empathy for others.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a diagnosable psychiatric disorder in which the patient has high levels of several narcissistic tendencies.
Read our full explainer on narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder to learn more.
Narcissistic admiration
You can think of narcissistic admiration as the positive side of narcissism.
Narcissistic admiration is based on self-promotion. The person positions themselves as unique or special, acts assertively around other people, and may seem charming and confident.
This type of narcissism is motivated by the desire to promote your own status. It’s associated with higher self-esteem.
The study measured narcissistic admiration by asking participants to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as: “I manage to be the center of attention with my outstanding contributions.”
The top 5 countries with the most narcissistic admiration were, from greatest to least:
- Nigeria
- Iraq
- Switzerland
- Nepal
- Turkey
Narcissistic rivalry
You can think of narcissistic rivalry as the dark side of narcissism.
It’s the tendency to be self-protective, self-defensive, and hostile or devaluing toward others, and is associated with lower self-esteem. When people are showing this type of narcissism, they may seem negative and reactive.
The study measured narcissistic rivalry by asking participants to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as, “I want my rivals to fail.”
What these two strains of narcissism have in common is that both help the person maintain their inflated sense of self-importance.
The top 5 countries with the most narcissistic rivalry were, from greatest to least:
- Germany
- South Korea
- Nepal
- Iraq
- Romania
Narcissism in collectivist vs. individualist societies
Individualistic societies, like the United States and other Western countries, tend to prioritize the needs of the individual and reward self-promotion.
In contrast, collectivist societies, like China and many other Asian countries, prioritize the good of the group over the individual, and self-promotion is not as socially acceptable.
If you asked yourself whether individualist or collectivist societies were more narcissistic, you might guess that individualist societies breed narcissism because they promote the individual. This is a common point of view in research and popular culture.
But this study found the opposite was true. Collectivist societies were more narcissistic than individualist ones. The study found they had higher narcissistic admiration, but not higher narcissistic rivalry overall.
For example, China, a collectivist society, had higher scores of overall narcissism, narcissistic admiration, and narcissistic rivalry than the United States, an individualistic society.
The researchers suggest a few reasons for this. The first is essentially that narcissism may be rewarded in the more rigid social hierarchies present in collectivist societies.
In these hierarchies, narcissistic tendencies may help people increase their status by gaining approval from important group members, rather than through overt self-promotion, the authors of this study suggest.
People with narcissistic tendencies in collectivist societies may be more likely to promote their own status covertly in ways that are seen to benefit the group.
Who has higher narcissism across cultures?
Certain groups of people reported higher levels of narcissism regardless of their culture:
- Men
- Young people
- People who said they had high status
These trends stayed constant across countries. Let’s look closer at each.
Men
Men tended to have higher narcissism than women.
The researchers suggest this may be influenced by different expectations societies have for men versus women. For instance, women may be socialized to be more group-oriented and selfless, while men may be rewarded for being competitive, dominant, and assertive.
Younger people
Younger people tended to have higher narcissism than older people.
The researchers suggested that younger people may tend to be more narcissistic because these behaviors are beneficial for them — seeking out status and resources benefit their survival.
In contrast, researchers have suggested that older people may benefit more from getting along well with others and being less self-promotional.
Those with higher social status
Perceived status also connected reliably to people’s narcissism levels.
People across countries who reported they were higher status had higher narcissism scores, while those who reported lower status had less narcissism.
Why this study is important
This study matters because of its really big sample size of more than 45,000 people and the fact that they came from a wide range of places — 53 countries around the world.
Sample size matters
The large sample size helped the researchers of this study see trends across cultures with greater clarity and certainty than smaller studies could.
It allows us to see wide-ranging trends in narcissism around the world, and to compare cultures at a fine-grained level compared to previous studies.
Diverse research participants
This study is also important because it had participants from many Eastern as well as Western countries, allowing the researchers to compare collectivist and individualist cultures more clearly.
This is in contrast to a lot of the research on narcissism to-date, which has mainly come from Western countries like the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. This has limited how much researchers could generalize their results.
Different types of narcissism
The study also divided up narcissism into a couple different traits: narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry.
This allowed the researchers to piece apart overt self-promoting traits like grandiosity from aggressive or negative behaviors like defensiveness.
Many previous studies have scored narcissism with a single number, rather than rating people’s levels of these different narcissistic traits, whereas this study looks at narcissism as a multidimensional phenomenon. That helps these researchers see nuances where other studies couldn’t.
The final word
This study challenges the widely held assumption that citizens of individualistic cultures, like the United States, are more narcissistic than those in collectivist cultures, like China.
Still, it’s important to note that China and the United States were not at opposite ends of the narcissism spectrum. The United States ranked 16th out of 53 countries, so it still had higher levels of narcissism than many countries, like Serbia, Ireland, and Denmark.
This study suggests that collectivistic and individualistic societies may both encourage narcissism, but in different ways that are socially acceptable within those cultures.
Other factors are also at play. Notably, a high GDP per capita — in other words, greater wealth of the country as a whole — was associated with greater narcissism.
Certain factors stayed steady across cultures. Men had higher narcissism than women, younger people had higher narcissism than older people, and self-proclaimed higher status people had higher narcissism. These were true around the world.
Health and science writer and founder of Relationship Smart, Stephanie believes the world of our minds is real, important, and studyable, and that our social relationships are core to our well-being — much more than we give them credit for. She created Relationship Smart to explore the endless ways our relationships affect us, and to answer all your burning questions about them with scientific rigor and sensitivity.