 29. Narcissism in Contemporary Personality Psychology  635
associated with vulnerability and grandios -
ity? As we noted in our opening paragraph, 
there is ongoing debate about the primary 
phenotypic expression of narcissism. The 
NSM helps to address this issue by carving out 
a role for the conceptually (and often psycho -
metrically) distinct attributes of entitlement, 
grandiosity, and vulnerability. We emphasize 
that these distinctions are largely based on 
between-  person studies of individual differ -
ences. They are not rooted in within-  person 
studies that track the moment-  by- moment or 
day-by-day fluctuations in narcissistic attri -
butes and psychological processes. It is possi -
ble that grandiosity and vulnerability might 
be integrated in interesting ways at a within- 
person level. Such an intraindividual  per-
spective might help reconcile the divergent 
conceptualizations of narcissism adopted by 
clinical psychologists and social/personality 
psychologists. Indeed, many of the more in -
teresting theoretical accounts about narcis -
sism in personality psychology emphasizing 
within-  person dynamics draw from classic 
clinical accounts (e.g., Robins et al., 2001; 
Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001).
The rich clinical descriptions of narcis -
sism have traditionally emphasized contex -
tualized dynamic processes that serve to 
moderate the expression of narcissistic be -
haviors across time and circumstance. The 
within-  person perspective of these accounts 
is sometimes lost in recent discussions about 
the between-  person structure of narcissistic 
attributes. Long-  standing theoretical con -
cepts (e.g., conscious grandiosity serves to 
mask nonconscious vulnerability) have led 
to the development of different scales to 
operationalize the diverse states that have 
been associated with narcissistic individuals. 
When administered as dispositional scales, 
these naturally asynchronous states of gran -
diosity and vulnerability form differentiable 
dimensions of individual differences. How -
ever, this work does not clarify how these 
attributes are associated within individu -
als. For instance, a complementary way to 
integrate the seemingly divergent constructs 
of grandiosity and vulnerability is to focus 
on their dynamic interplay within individu -
als and across context (e.g., Edershile et al., 
2019; Sadikaj, Moskowitz, Russell, Zuroff, 
& Paris, 2013). Put simply, it is possible 
some individuals vacillate between states of grandiosity and vulnerability in ways that 
are clinically relevant. Beyond the theoreti -
cal integration achieved by this perspective, 
this approach offers an avenue for testing 
the proposition that grandiosity serves as a 
defense against perceptions of threat or feel -
ings of shame (see, e.g., Tracy, Cheng, Mar -
tens, & Robins, 2011).
It is now well established that manifesta -
tions of personality (i.e., thoughts, feelings, 
and behaviors) fluctuate within persons over 
short time periods (e.g., moments to days; 
Fleeson, 2001; Wright & Simms, 2016) 
when they are assessed with appropriate am -
bulatory assessment techniques (Wright & 
Hopwood, 2016; Wright & Zimmermann, 
2019). Furthermore, individuals appear to re -
liably differ in the degree to which they vary 
in relevant domains (e.g., affect, self-  esteem, 
exhibitionism; Eid & Diener, 1999; Fleeson 
& Gallagher, 2009; Moskowitz & Zuroff, 
2004; Wright & Simms, 2016), making be -
havioral variability an individual-  difference 
variable in its own right. Although it is 
tempting to take these findings and translate 
them into straightforward research ques -
tions (e.g., do individuals high in narcissism 
have unstable momentary self-  esteem?), it is 
likely that the actual intrapsychic dynamics 
are complicated and need to involve a care -
ful consideration of individuals and their 
contexts rather than just pure within-  person 
variability itself. For example, there have 
been long-  standing debates about whether 
narcissists have high or low self-  esteem, 
and several investigators have pursued these 
questions, with mixed results (e.g., Bosson 
et al., 2008; Geukes et al., 2016; Rhodewalt, 
Madrain, & Cheney, 1998). One of the ear -
liest studies was conducted by Rhodewalt, 
Madrian, and Cheney, who found that NPI 
scores were predictive of daily variability in 
self- esteem. However, a small meta-  analytic 
integration of findings from several datasets 
failed to find this effect. More recently, the 
point was made that different aspects of nar -
cissism may be predictive of self-  esteem sta -
bility and instability (Geukes et al., 2016). 
Similarly, it is likely important to tie fluc -
tuations in self-  esteem with life events (e.g., 
achieving or failing a desired outcome) and 
interpersonal processes (e.g., getting ahead 
or coming into conflict with others).