How to Handle Those People Who Always Have to Be Right

You know that person who always has to be the “expert,” no matter what the topic or situation. Perhaps you’ve just gone on a fabulous cruise which, to you, was as perfect as could be. In retelling some of the highlights of your trip to a new neighbor, you are taken aback by what he says. In his own recent tour to the same place, led by a private "exclusive" company, he makes it clear that his trip was clearly superior. Not only that, but you missed out on some of the most important side trips you could have taken while visiting these amazing places. Making matters worse, he observes that the cruise line you went on recently experienced a fleet-wide epidemic, and you’re lucky you didn’t get sick.

Other types of self-appointed experts may insert themselves, similarly, into situations in which their supposed knowledge becomes relevant whether or not they have bona fide credentials. You may have an acquaintance whose every conversation is sprinkled with statements that begin “As a matter of fact,” or “I happen to know,” or “Let me tell you what’s really going on.” She speaks with authority, or so it seems, no matter what the topic under discussion. On top of that, her body language shows that she has no qualms expressing her great wisdom on the topic.

People who feel they need to show their expertise across topics and situations may very well be high on the quality of grandiose narcissism, needing to appear superior to everyone else in a way that becomes self-aggrandizing by virtue of the authority they claim to hold. By contrast, people high on the vulnerability component of narcissism have unusually low self-esteem and must engage in a variety of defensive strategies to protect this weakness from being seen by others.

According to Villanova University’s Samantha Dashineau and colleagues (2019), although the vulnerable narcissist may not be as prone to bragging, people high in this quality share the grandiose narcissist’s need to maintain “a positive self-image through validation, self-enhancement, and defensive strategies” (p. 473). Grandiosity may be an attempt to impress others but, just as importantly, can become part of a larger picture of trying to impress oneself. Those so-called experts, then, don’t just want other people to applaud their wealth of knowledge. They need to convince themselves.

Just as you become annoyed by the show-off offering expert advice, people with high levels of narcissism annoy almost everyone, further hampering their ability to feel loved and appreciated. Previous researchers established that the interpersonal fate of the narcissist tends to be a glum one. These highly self-confident people may appear scintillating and attractive upon first meeting, just as so-called experts may impress you with their wealth of knowledge. However, it doesn’t take too long before their smugness wears thin and you’d like to hear less, rather than more, about their self-professed expertise. People high in narcissism, as the Villanova-led team observe, have significant interpersonal problems, in part due to their domineering tendencies which can become tinged with vindictiveness. You may have run into these problems yourself if you’ve decided not to heed the advice of such an individual who claims to have your best interest at heart.

As you might imagine, people who have the grandiose form of narcissism have a different set of interpersonal problems than those whose narcissism takes a more self-questioning form, full of doubts and insecurities. Imagine now that your travel “expert” is sincerely trying to provide you with the best advice possible, but is doing so from a desire to look knowledgeable rather than to be domineering and manipulative. You get the sense that he’s really trying to help you, but is doing so in a way that fulfills his own need to seem knowledgeable rather than to make you look inadequate. Unfortunately for him, he’s doing so in a way that has the opposite effect than he intended, causing you to try to extricate yourself from the situation as soon as possible and avoid him as much as you can. You might even feel a little bad that he seems to be so needy for recognition.

According to Dashineau and her colleagues, it is actually the vulnerable component that lies beneath the dysfunctions in relationships of people whose narcissism is so pronounced it reaches pathological levels. To test this prediction, the authors recruited a sample of 288 current or recently hospitalized adults (average age of 43; 64% female) to complete questionnaires assessing pathological narcissism, degree of interpersonal disability, psychosocial functioning, and interpersonal problems. The grandiose component of pathological narcissism included scales assessing exploitativeness, grandiose fantasy, and self-enhancement. Narcissistic vulnerability was assessed with scales tapping contingent self-esteem (needing others to like you to feel good about yourself), hiding self-weaknesses, “entitlement rage” (feeling angered at not being appreciated), and devaluing. Participants also indicated their overall satisfaction with life, and rated their suicidality feelings within the past month. As you can see, then, these outcome measures were comprehensive assessments that provided a broad spectrum of dysfunction in everyday life.

Although the grandiose and vulnerable narcissism scales might seem to be tapping separate qualities, even from reading the scale descriptions you can probably see how they would overlap. A grandiose narcissist would undoubtedly express rage over not receiving special treatment, a scale within the vulnerable narcissism measure. To examine the impact of these two features of narcissism, Dashineau and her fellow researchers statistically controlled for their overlap. The findings showed, perhaps surprisingly, that grandiosity alone, without the vulnerability component, was not related to poorer functioning but, instead, to higher life satisfaction and fewer self-reported interpersonal problems. By contrast, the vulnerable component of narcissism was linked to impediments across a broad domain of psychosocial functioning.

Dashineau et al. conclude that, from a practical standpoint, it’s the vulnerability core of narcissism that can lead people to seek treatment when their personal lives are going downhill. People high in pure grandiosity either don’t have, or don’t notice, a similar level of dysfunction. They’ll only seek treatment when “they are in a vulnerable state,” note the authors. In their words, furthermore, “It is the domain of vulnerability, as well as the shared characteristics of grandiosity and vulnerability… that largely drives dysfunction” (p. 477).

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Returning to the case of those annoying experts in your life, the Dashineau et al. results suggest that you consider the underlying source of the advice these individuals give. To the extent that vulnerability drives their over-the-top help, that source is an inner feeling of weakness and inferiority. As a way to manage these situations, you might try setting aside your own feelings and not overreact. It’s even possible that, through the veneer of supposed expertise, they actually have some useful observations to offer.

To sum up, these findings support previous work showing the need to consider narcissism from the empirical perspective of examining its separate and shared components. The people in your life whose “core deficits,” as the authors note, are driving their grandiose and entitled behavior do not have to spend their lives in dysfunction once they can address that inner sense of weakness.

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