A new meta-analysis pooling data from more than 12,000 adults has found that difficulties with managing emotions are notably linked to one form of narcissism while showing little to no connection with another. The study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, indicates that insecure and defensive features of narcissism are associated with emotion dysregulation, whereas more boastful, outwardly dominant narcissistic traits are not consistently tied to these emotional difficulties.
In psychology, narcissism exists along a spectrum of traits rather than as a single label. It is typically divided into grandiose and vulnerable subtypes. Grandiose narcissism describes an outgoing, attention-seeking, self-assured style, while vulnerable narcissism involves introversion, fragile self-esteem and heightened sensitivity to rejection. The new analysis expands on this distinction to explore how each subtype relates to emotional control in everyday life.
The authors note that the broader literature has long produced conflicting findings, in part because studies have measured different aspects of emotion regulation. A 2024 review suggested a link between vulnerable narcissism and emotional struggles but mixed evidence for grandiose narcissism. This latest work, led by Megan L. Willis of Australian Catholic University, seeks to quantify those relationships more precisely by combining data across multiple studies and populations.
A total of 26 eligible studies, encompassing 12,209 participants with ages averaging roughly 19 to 62, were included after screening five major databases up to January 2026. Participants were drawn from the United States, Italy, Turkey, China, Iran, Brazil and other locations, with studies conducted in non-clinical, everyday adult samples rather than clinical or prison populations.
Researchers grouped narcissism measures into three categories: grandiose, vulnerable and combined measures that blended both traits. Examples include the Narcissistic Personality Inventory for grandiose narcissism, and the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale for vulnerable narcissism. Some studies used self-promoting “admiration” scales, counted as grandiose, while defensive “rivalry” scales were treated as vulnerable.
Almost all studies employed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, which covers overall dysregulation and six specific problem areas. The team extracted 80 correlations from the 26 studies and used robust variance estimation to account for multiple data points from the same participant groups.
When all data were pooled without distinguishing subtypes, the overall correlation between narcissism and emotion dysregulation was a modest 0.15, indicating a small positive association across adults generally. However, when the data were broken down by narcissism subtype, a clearer pattern emerged: vulnerable narcissism correlated at 0.37 with emotion dysregulation across 11 studies, while grandiose narcissism showed a near-zero 0.04 across 21 studies.
“The relationship with vulnerable narcissism was moderate in size, which is quite a meaningful relationship in individual differences research,” Willis noted. “Narcissism reflects a cluster of personality traits, so we wouldn’t expect any single psychological factor to explain it. The size of the relationship suggests that difficulties regulating emotions are an important part of the psychological profile of people high in vulnerable narcissism.”
Combined measures that touched on both forms of narcissism fell in the middle, with a correlation of 0.25 across five studies. Sensitivity analyses showed that removing certain overlapping items could alter the results: excluding the grandiose scale from some measures left grandiose narcissism at 0.03, while excluding a single study that counted the defensive rivalry scale as vulnerable left vulnerability at 0.37.
The researchers also examined individual emotion-regulation domains and found weak but reliable links with four or five studies reporting six areas. Narcissism showed a modest association with limited access to effective emotion regulation strategies (0.21), trouble controlling impulses when upset (0.19), and a tendency to refuse accepting negative emotions (0.18). In contrast, there was no clear link to emotional awareness (-0.08) or clarity (0.13), and only a small association with difficulty maintaining goal-directed focus when distressed (0.13).
Willis said the pattern implies the emotional challenges linked to narcissism may relate more to how people respond to unpleasant feelings than to recognising or naming them, potentially contributing to hostile or withdrawn responses during conflicts. “They tend to be hypersensitive to rejection and criticism,” she added, “and our findings suggest they are also more likely to have difficulty regulating their emotions.”
The study emphasises several caveats. All included research relied on self-report questionnaires, which depend on participants’ honesty and self-awareness. The authors caution that grandiose narcissism might not be captured fully by such measures, and one earlier facial-muscle study suggests emotional responses to negative social evaluation could be amplified in people with grandiose traits, hinting that questionnaires may miss some responses.
Across all studies, the designs were cross-sectional, limiting any conclusions about the direction of the relationship. The sample composition—half of the studies drawing on university students and a predominance of Western nations—also tempers the generalisability to older adults or different cultural contexts. Willis stressed that absence of a relationship for grandiose narcissism does not prove there is no link, noting that self-report bias could obscure findings for this subgroup.
Looking ahead, the researchers advocate routine reporting of data for all emotion-regulation subscales alongside total scores, and they call for longitudinal studies and more diverse samples. They also suggest that therapies aimed at improving emotion regulation—such as dialectical behaviour therapy or schema therapy—may be worth testing for people high in vulnerable narcissism, though evidence of treatment benefits remains to be established.
In ongoing work, Willis and colleagues are exploring the developmental roots of vulnerable narcissism, examining how insecure attachment and early difficulties identifying, understanding, and regulating emotions may contribute to its emergence. The team aims to identify modifiable factors that could inform prevention or intervention strategies.
The study, The relationship between narcissism and emotion dysregulation: A systematic review and meta-analysis, was authored by Ria Tziliaskopoulos, Rose Ferguson, Wendy Song and Megan L. Willis.
