A new study by Italian researchers has found that social anxiety and vulnerable narcissism share a deep link to feelings of inadequacy, but diverge in the specific emotional mechanisms that underpin them. In a sample of 400 adults, social anxiety was uniquely tied to internal feelings of defectiveness, while vulnerable narcissism encompassed a broader array of vulnerabilities, including fear of outside judgment and an elevated expectation of rejection.
Social anxiety describes distress in situations that carry potential public scrutiny or negative evaluation. Some psychologists view it as an evolutionary mechanism that keeps people connected to a group, by heightening sensitivity to status loss and prompting self-protective behaviours in threatening interpersonal contexts.
Narcissism exists on a continuum from normal self-regard to more pathological patterns. Psychologists typically separate clinical narcissism into grandiosity and vulnerability. Grandiose narcissism features overt entitlement and arrogance, whereas vulnerable narcissism involves hypersensitivity to evaluation, fragile self-worth and defensive strategies aimed at protecting the ego.
Both social anxiety and vulnerable narcissism share a heightened sensitivity to interpersonal threats. A central mechanism linking them is rejection sensitivity—a tendency to anxiously expect, readily perceive and intensely react to social rejection. This sensitivity is thought to develop from early experiences of criticism or exclusion, biasing individuals to interpret ambiguous social cues as signs of impending rejection.
This pattern aligns with the Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory, which posits that perceived acceptance or rejection in close relationships, especially early in life, is linked to later psychological adjustment. Rejection experiences with caregivers or peers have been tied to a greater tendency to perceive rejection and heightened anxiety in response to potential rejection, with inwardly directed distress capable of triggering intense shame.
Shame is a powerful social emotion tied to feelings of inferiority and is categorised into internal and external forms. Internal shame involves viewing oneself as fundamentally flawed, leading to harsh self-criticism, while external shame centres on the belief that others view one negatively, often prompting defensive strategies such as avoiding social contact or attempting to repair one’s public image.
The study was designed by Giulia Rosa Policardo of eCampus University in Novedrate, together with colleagues from Sapienza University of Rome and the Institute of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychology and Psychotherapy. Previous work had documented links between rejection sensitivity, shame and these psychological profiles, but it remained unclear how internal and external shame might differ in their associations with social anxiety and vulnerable narcissism when examined together.
Researchers recruited 400 adult volunteers from the general population, predominately Italian women, with an average age of 33. The design treated both social anxiety and vulnerable narcissism as traits varying across the public, rather than within a clinical population.
Participants completed online questionnaires to measure the relevant traits. Vulnerable narcissism was assessed by agreement with statements about feeling poorly about oneself when ignored by others. Social anxiety was measured through reported fear and avoidance of various social situations, such as making a phone call in public.
Interpersonal rejection sensitivity was evaluated by asking participants to imagine scenarios (for example, asking a family member for a financial loan) and rating their anxiety about the outcome and the likelihood of rejection. Internal shame was assessed by questions about feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with them, while external shame queried how often participants believed others despised them.
In initial correlational analyses, rejection sensitivity, internal shame and external shame were positively associated with both social anxiety symptoms and vulnerable narcissistic traits. On the surface, individuals scoring high on either trait tended to report a broad spectrum of shame and a persistent fear of rejection.
When the researchers performed multiple regression analyses to isolate the unique contributions of each variable, distinct patterns emerged. For vulnerable narcissism, younger age, higher rejection sensitivity and elevated levels of both internal and external shame predicted greater narcissistic tendencies.
By contrast, in the model predicting social anxiety symptoms, internal shame stood out as the sole independent predictor. Age, sex, rejection sensitivity and external shame did not retain statistical significance in this model.
The findings suggest that while social anxiety and vulnerable narcissism share overlapping features, their emotional cores differ. Social anxiety appears to be specifically anchored to an internalised view of the self as inadequate, with distress driven largely by self-criticism rather than merely others’ judgment.
Vulnerable narcissism, however, seems to involve a broader interpersonal vulnerability—rejection sensitivity together with both forms of shame indicating a persistent preoccupation with how one is perceived and a readiness to defend against perceived slights.
The study, titled Internal and external shame and rejection sensitivity as correlates of vulnerable narcissism and social anxiety, was authored by Policardo, Di Gesto, Marsigli, Lauretta, Baroni and Salvatori. It remains, however, subject to limitations inherent in its cross-sectional design.
Researchers note that the data are cross-sectional, meaning they show associations at a single point in time and cannot establish causality or sequence. They also point out that the sample consisted largely of women, which may limit the generalisability of the findings to men or more gender-balanced populations.
Other limitations include the exclusive use of self-report measures, which can inflate associations due to participants’ varying levels of insight or willingness to disclose sensitive traits. The researchers did not collect information on psychiatric history or prior psychological trauma, factors that could influence levels of shame or rejection sensitivity.
Looking ahead, the authors call for longitudinal and experience-sampling studies to trace how these processes unfold over time. They also suggest recruiting more gender-balanced samples and directly examining potential sex and gender differences, as well as accounting for trauma histories, psychiatric history and prior psychological treatment to build a fuller picture of how these interpersonal vulnerabilities develop.
The study highlights the nuanced ways in which shame and rejection sensitivity intersect with social anxiety and vulnerable narcissism, offering a more detailed map of the emotional landscapes underpinning these common yet distinct psychological profiles.
