Social anxiety, narcissism, and fantasy: a relationship?

Abstract

Two features characterise highly socially anxious individuals: they tend to withdraw from social interaction, and they are excessively self-focused (American Psychological Association; APA, 2000). The current study set out to investigate whether individuals high in social anxiety withdraw into a world of fantasy more frequently than individuals low in social anxiety, and whether their fantasies are narcissistic in nature. Two hundred and forty three university students filled out a questionnaire which contained scales measuring social anxiety, overt and covert forms of narcissism, frequency of fantasy, and seven different types of fantasy: narcissistic, achievement, heroic, sex, fear-of-failure, hostile, and pleasurable (non-narcissistic). All the scales were subjected to principal components analysis in order to test their validity, and correlations were applied to investigate relationships between the above variables. The results showed that social anxiety was significantly related to narcissistic, achievement, fear-of-failure and hostile fantasies, however, there was no significant relationship between social anxiety and frequency of fantasy. Social anxiety was positively related to a measure of covert narcissism, but negatively related to a measure of overt narcissism. Covert narcissism, in turn, showed a significant positive correlation with frequency of fantasy, and all types of fantasy, but most particularly narcissistic and hostile fantasies. Three conclusions were drawn: (1) that the currently available measures of narcissism need to be improved, (2) that high socially anxious individuals in general do not fantasise more than low socially anxious individuals, but that (3) there appears to be a distinct subtype of highly socially anxious individuals who are significantly more narcissistic, and who fantasise significantly more (especially on themes of self-aggrandizement and hostility towards others) than low socially anxious individuals. These findings are discussed, and suggestions for further research are offered.