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January 24th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, Jan. 23 (HealthDay News) — The inflated sense of
self-importance common to narcissism can be toxic to relationships, but a
new study suggests the personality trait may also harm men’s health.
Researchers from the Universities of Michigan and Virginia determined
that men who scored high on two destructive narcissistic traits —
entitlement and exploitativeness — had markedly higher levels than others
of cortisol, a stress hormone that can lead to high blood pressure and
heart problems. While men and women are equally narcissistic, study
authors said, the cortisol stress response was not noted in female
participants.
“We generally see narcissism as a personality trait that’s bad for
others but not narcissists. It’s bad for people in relationships with
them,” said study co-author Sara Konrath, an assistant research professor
at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. “This study
was a way of getting under their skin to see if there are physical
consequences.”
The study is published Jan. 23 in the journal PLoS ONE.
Konrath and her colleagues administered a 40-item questionnaire to 106
college students that measured five components of narcissism, which is
also characterized by self-absorption, overestimations of their
uniqueness — attractiveness or intelligence, for instance — and a sense
of grandiosity. They also measured cortisol levels twice in the students’
saliva to assess baseline levels of the hormone, which signals activity in
the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA), the body’s key stress
response system.
Three of narcissism’s five personality components are considered useful
or healthy: leadership/authority, superiority/arrogance and
self-absorption/self-admiration. Konrath also noted that narcissists tend
to be creative people with low levels of depression, but their fragile
views of themselves can lead them to react defensively and resort to
aggression when their sense of superiority is threatened.
The authors found elevated levels of cortisol only in the men with
unhealthy narcissism, and they speculated that in these men the HPA axis
is chronically activated.
While study data didn’t explain why only men seem to suffer from a
higher stress response to narcissism, Konrath speculated that societal
definitions of masculinity that overlap with the trait — such as
arrogance or dominance — may leave men particularly vulnerable
physiologically.
“They’re at especially high risk because someone who admits they’re
stressed out is going to get help, but they’re not likely to,” she said.
“There may be a cost to this jerkiness. It’s a little sad they’re a group
that wouldn’t get help if they needed it.”
While the study “invites people to look at this issue in a more
comprehensive way,” it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship
between narcissism and the body’s stress response, said Dr. Mark Russ,
director of psychiatric services at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks,
N.Y.
“People with narcissism may be type-A, very driven, perfectionistic and
seek high-stress situations, and the cortisol levels may be measuring
that,” Russ said. “There may be an overlap.”
Konrath said future research will focus on the reason women don’t
respond physiologically to narcissism as men apparently do. Narcissism
levels have increased in both genders in recent years, she said, perhaps
as a byproduct of the so-called “self-esteem movement,” which emphasizes
praise for children over criticism.
“It could be a change in the educational environment,” she said. “I
think it’s nice we’re trying to be thoughtful and careful of people’s
feelings, but we may err on the side of not being [constructive].”
More information
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about the unhealthy
aspects of narcissism.
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