The purpose of this study was to verify that people with the tendency of overt or covert narcissism are weak against anger rumination and show immature characters, but may improve character maturation through self-compassion. Also, it examined that t...
The purpose of this study was to verify that people with the tendency of overt or covert narcissism are weak against anger rumination and show immature characters, but may improve character maturation through self-compassion. Also, it examined that the contrasting appearance of overt narcissism and covert narcissism contributes to the difference in self-directedness and cooperativeness, which are the components of character maturation, and that it is necessary to seek measures of differentiated intervention. For this study, a total of 470 adults over 20 years of age were surveyed and path analysis was conducted to verify the mediating effect of anger rumination and the moderation effect of self-compassion between overt, covert narcissism and character maturation and the influence of overt, covert narcissism on self-directedness and cooperativeness, the scales of character maturation. The findings of this study were threefold: first, anger rumination completely mediated the negative relationship of overt narcissism and character maturation. Covert narcissism partially mediated only cooperativeness of character maturation. Second, self-compassion had the moderation effect for character maturation and cooperativeness with both overt narcissism and covert narcissism. Third, overt and covert narcissism had different influence on self-directedness and cooperativeness of character maturation. With higher overt narcissism, it had a greater negative influence on cooperativeness than on self-directedness; with higher covert narcissism, it had a greater negative influence on self-directedness than on cooperativeness. Based on these findings, this study suggested a method of intervention for moderation of character maturation with narcissism. The implied method of intervention conveyed moderation of anger rumination, improvement of self-compassion, 'interpersonal relationships' for overt narcissism and 'intrapersonal relationships' for covert narcissism.