Unresponsiveness to Intensified Shame-Inducing Scenarios Helps Distinguish between Genuine and Defensive Low Shame in Narcissism

Low shame scores on self-reported measures do not distinguish between genuine and defensive low (unacknowledged) shame associated with narcissistic grandiosity. To distinguish between them, we intensified shame-inducing scenarios of the self-report measure of shame- and guilt-proneness and applied them with the original scenarios and with self-report measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic personality traits to 1,077 Croatian students from diverse universities (M_age = 24.63; 85.51% female) recruited online. We defined shame responsiveness as the average difference between shame scores on the intensified and original scenarios and assumed that participants with genuine low shame would report greater shame on intensified scenarios, whereas those with defensive low shame may rigidly mobilize unconscious defenses and tend not to report greater shame (shame unresponsiveness). Data analyses supported this. In contrast to narcissistic vulnerability, as grandiosity (and, presumably, unacknowledged shame) increased, self-reported shame-proneness and shame responsiveness decreased. Participants who were unresponsive to intensified scenarios were significantly more likely to be high in grandiosity than those whose average shame score increased. Unresponsiveness to scenarios of increased intensity suggests a defense against shame experiences, rather than low propensity to shame experiences and may help us identify participants whose low self-reported shame (only) hides a large portion of shame that cannot be acknowledged and that otherwise remains unexamined.