Travis Pratt

Activism for social justice causes can serve as a vehicle for pathological narcissists to virtue signal and elevate themselves above others. "The dark-ego-vehicle principle suggests that individuals with so-called dark personalities (e.g., high narcissistic traits) are attracted to political and social activism that they can repurpose to satisfy their specific ego-focused needs (e.g., signaling moral superiority and manipulating others) instead of achieving prosocial goals. With two pre-registered studies, we sought further evidence for the dark-ego-vehicle principle by examining the associations of pathological narcissistic grandiosity with involvement in LGBQ activism and gender identity activism. The results of the present research show that involvement in LGBQ activism is predicted by elevated altruism, being younger, and being female. However, the main results of both studies also indicate that individuals’ high in pathological narcissistic grandiosity may be drawn to prosocial activism. In line with our pre-registered hypotheses, we found that higher pathological narcissistic grandiosity was related to higher involvement in LBGQ activism as well as gender identity activism. Also, the size of these relationships was higher than the median of the effect sizes found in other pre-registered studies. We had argued that the moral-based elements of prosocial activism may provide narcissistic individuals with an opportunity for signaling their self-accredited grandiose moral superiority and virtue. The results of the present research provide direct empirical evidence for this notion. Hence, activism integrated morality seems to attract narcissistic virtue signalers enabling them to inauthentically signal their self-accredited prosocial virtue while truly striving for ego-focused goals, such as personal fame and social status. The results of the present research also replicate the findings of previous studies which found higher narcissistic traits to predict involvement in anti-sexual assault activism, feminist activism, climate activism, and political activism. Our results suggest that the controversies fought out in the name of pro-LGBQ and/or pro-gender identity activism may only on the surface be related to conflicts around sexual/gender identity while they are actually caused—at least in part—by the dark traits of some activists who are hijacking the activist movement for the satisfaction of their own ego-focused needs (e.g., to signal their self-accredited moral superiority). Instead of raising awareness, such behavior may cause irreparable reputational harm to the activist movement inevitably reducing public support for the cause. Therefore, minorities and their true allies need to be aware of the narcissistic “enemies from within”´.