The early life of Narcissus: The connections that childhood harshness and unpredictability have with narcissistic personality traits

Early childhood experiences have been shown to be associated with narcissism. Life-history theory suggests that early socioecological conditions may be especially impactful in shaping traits and behavior. Using this evolutionary perspective, we examined the associations that perceived childhood harshness and unpredictability had with narcissistic personality traits. Across three studies (N = 697/738/701), perceived childhood unpredictability was positively associated with antagonistic narcissism. In addition, gender sometimes moderated this association such that the connection between unpredictability and antagonistic narcissism tended to be stronger in men than women. In contrast, perceived childhood harshness and unpredictability had relatively weak and inconsistent associations with agentic narcissism, neurotic narcissism, and communal narcissism across the present studies. These results suggest that perceived childhood unpredictability is associated with antagonistic narcissism especially for men, whereas childhood socioecological conditions seem to have little – if any – connection with other narcissistic personality traits. •Childhood unpredictability was positively associated with antagonistic narcissism.•Unpredictability had stronger association with antagonistic narcissism for men.•Early socioecological conditions had few connections with other forms of narcissism.