https://www.reddit.com/r/zeronarcissists/comments/1acus33/the_mechanisms_of_narcissistic_projection/
created by theconstellinguist on 28/01/2024 at 05:02 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/zeronarcissists/
" **Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories,** **instead of theories to suit facts**" ~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(Sherlock Holmes). "
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/1968-10594-001.pdf[2][3]
2: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/1968-10594-001.pdf
3: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/1968-10594-001.pdf
What is **projection**?
1. **The ego is said to project onto the external world whatever is within itself** which if recognized as belonging to the self would give rise to pain (Freud, 19S6b).
This research is the first to prove the presence of projection. They prove two types; **complementary and attributive.**
1. **Complementary projection is when someone projects beliefs that make sense to them (beliefs they have) onto something that doesn’t otherwise make sense to them.**
2. **Attributive projection is one unwittingly attributes one’s own traits, attitudes, and subjective processes to another.**
3. There is no way to study the original Freudian projection because it includes projecting unconscious urges; there is no way to measure something someone is unconscious of. You can only guess at what biases may be through bias detecting techniques.
There is strong evidence for only self aware evidence. There isn’t strong evidence for projection that isn’t aware one possess the trait (self aware evidence) but again this is because **there is no way to measure something about which the person is not aware, you can only infer unconscious bias, and only very precariously.**
1. that there is strong evidence for the projection of S's own trait or the complement of this trait if S is aware, ***or keenly suspects that*** he possesses the trait. There is no evidence for any type of projection resulting from a trait which S is not aware that he possesses
The paranoic projection happens when, by projecting one’s unacceptable feelings for another onto the other**, they essentially treat the emotion like a creepy bug with a “get it off” and it goes instead to someone else, where it is more acceptable to examine from a safe distance.**
1. So, someone struggling with unacceptable and obsessive attraction to someone may **say “I hate** ***her*****” in his mind, but then when asked, say that she is delusional and obsessive and hates*\* ***him*****.*\*
In the absence of other information about someone, or in gross disregard to other information about someone and simply out of convenience, **complementary projection is when we assume other people think and act like us. It only becomes noxious and pathological when there is clearly contradictory evidence that the person ignores out of convenience to their own personal theory of the person (narcissistic projection)**
1. “She suggested that this type of projection is "not essentially different from the tendency to assume naively that others feel or react in the same manner as we ourselves do" and that this type "of projection is in no ways connected with the unconscious process [Horney, 1939, p. 26]." **The individual has a fully conscious attitude or belief and, because of his possible naivete or lack of information about other persons, he believes that they feel or think as he does**. The question of whether or not the projecting individual is aware of his own trait possession provides another dimension along which types of projection differ.”
Complementary projection can also be a way to project what would make stimuli make sense onto stimuli that otherwise doesn’t make sense.
1. **After having their feelings about a topic hypnotically changed, the subjects changed their beliefs about the topic so that the beliefs would be consistent with the feelings.** Valins (1966) has also shown that subjects change their perception of stimuli so that the stimuli are congruent with their feelings. 1. The hypnotized feelings no longer make sense to their pre-hypnosis beliefs about the subject, so to make this make sense, they project what would make sense for those feelings onto the subject. 1. In an experiment, pictures of women where the experimenter made a needle whirl more rapidly when the subject viewed them projected their attraction onto the behavior, even if they showed no signs of attraction. 2. **Similarly, the circular reasoning of classism shows that if someone is poor who they don’t think should be poor, people will change their feelings to match their belief and what might be respect or confusion becomes the usual hostility or contempt they feel for someone who is poor so the encounter of what they might otherwise respect or admire no longer evokes such dissonance.** 3. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer-Bosson/publication/346104511%5C_Ambivalent%5C_Classism%5C_The%5C_Importance%5C_of%5C_Assessing%5C_Hostile%5C_and%5C_Benevolent%5C_Ideologies%5C_about%5C_Poor%5C_People/links/63135caa1ddd44702131a58b/Ambivalent-Classism-The-Importance-of-Assessing-Hostile-and-Benevolent-Ideologies-about-Poor-People.pdf[4][5] 4. If someone isn’t paid well, even if someone thinks they should be, **people will project that they think the work is of little value to make it make sense, even if it is in error and the person is mispaid.** This is similar to “**just world fallacy**”.
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/femcrim8&div=13&g%5C_sent=1&casa%5C_token=aE%5C_gmqKK4usAAAAA:eg5RDYpHGJ1nNS8kBWr8TC7YdfHNewyi6EhTdS6JaVKC1CZF860e6XKpvMxu%5C_T4WU7Sv0GTrJQ[6][7]
1. You can see this in pricing. Items that are underpriced see “stickiness” when someone tries to price them correctly after deliberate (illegal) underpricing. People project feelings to match incoming data that doesn’t make sense (complementary projection). **The average person cannot detect deliberate underpricing and instead rationalizes the item as not valuable even if it is valuable, which is why it is such a popular technique (illegal way to cut costs).**
2. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1032960595?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals[8][9]
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1. “The motivation or dynamics behind complementary projection can be conceived of as ego defensive in that it enables the person to see the world as consonant with and justifying his own feelings or actions. 1. **When something is ego defensive, instead of ultimately coherent with reality in all of its elements, it is highly a narcissistic projection**, that things need to make sense to one’s immediate ego projections no matter how inaccurate those immediate ego projections may be.”
“They pointed out that "when a person feels fear (or anxiety) yet perceives initially nothing in the situation adequate to account for it," he will experience cognitive dissonance because "his belief that he is afraid is dissonant with his belief that the situation does not contain fear-arousing aspects [p. 267]." **They suggested that if the situation as it was originally perceived did not provide cues which the subject could use to explain his fear, the subject may have to change his perception (attitudes) of the situation in order to explain his feelings of fear and reduce his dissonance**.”
1. In changing his perception, the subject might employ what in this paper has been called complementary projection.
2. **In reality, the individual is twisting facts to suit the theory instead of the theory to suit the facts. This is narcissistic in nature as it puts the ego defense of what they feel first, as opposed to the distressing admittance that not everything they feel is rational.**
3. **A non-projective, rational approach would be to see this is internally, not externally sourced, anxiety, and that not all anxiety has a real cause in the world even if that is offensive to the ego that considers its perceptions unswayed by merely internal physiological responses.** 1. “In view of these results, it is suggested that an individual who does not see his feelings or actions as having a basis in reality might easily **become very anxious about the appropriateness of his responses and consequently anxious about his contact with reality. It may be that complementary projection is used to avoid this threatening and unpleasant situation by providing a justification** for the feelings.”
4. The dial readings were actually manipulated by the experimenter so that the dials indicated to both movie and slide subjects that they were very much afraid. In this way, subjects were led to believe that they were afraid of stimuli associated with Russia. In one condition (the threatening movie) there was ample justification for the fear, while in the other condition (neutral Russian slides) the situation did not provide any justification for the fear 1. To test the hypothesis that there would be greater attitude change, or complementary projection, when the situation did not provide fear-justifying cues than when these cues were present, the experimenters compared the two experimental groups for amount of attitude change concerning the Russian threat. **The results indicated that the subjects in the slide condition, that is, those who were not exposed to frightening stimuli which they could use to explain their fear, showed a greater tendency than did the subjects in the movie condition to change their attitudes in the direction of seeing the Russians as more threatening.** ***Because the subjects were unable to deny the fact that they were frightened, and because they could not attribute their fear to the neutral pictures, they changed their beliefs*** **about the actual degree of danger posed by the Russians.**
5. **If one aggresses against another and feels guilty about being aggressive, he might "derogate the object of his aggression, thus psychologically implying that the aggressive act was justified" (**i.e., use complementary projection). 1. "It seems more likely that S will be less willing to face his aggression when he feels guilty about it" and therefore the high guilt subjects would not project to justify the aggression, for in justifying it they would be admitting to it 2. **Again, this is narcissistic in nature because of instead of accepting that the individual may have internal impulses he cannot control, which offends the ego, he tries to justify the more unconscious/animalistic behavior of his body to keep his body seeming rational so as to prevent it from being an immediate ego threat around which he cannot hide.**
a." while in the high-guilt condition they were told that "for some reason the other girl was very sensitive to shock and seemed in some pain." It seems as if the high-guilt subjects were led to see the other girl as weak and hurt, characteristics which would be inconsistent with seeing her as threatening
1. l**. In this case, a hurt weak female was seen as relatively less aggressive or threatening than one who was not hurt.**
In **attributive projection** the individual projects onto other people characteristics which are identical to his own, and he is consciously aware of these characteristics within himself.
1. "**in its clearest form it is nothing more than the assumption by a person, without supporting evidence, that others are as he is, that they are behaviorally the same** or closely similar [p. 381]
1. **Goldings (1954) found that, except for extreme subjects, ratings of the happiness of photographed individuals were positively related to the judges' self-avowed level of happiness.** Wright (194**2) reported that children's overt generosity was significantly correlated with their ratings of the generosity of others**, while the results of Mintz (1956) indicated that children's ages were positively related to their judged age of Peter Pan. Feshbach and Singer (1957) reported that college males who were frightened by electrical shocks saw another college aged male as more frightened than did subjects who had not been exposed to the shock threat
1. In this study, the correlations between the predictor's own scores and the actual scores of the predictees was only .15. A correlation of .07 between the predicted and actual scores indicated that in fact the subjects were very inaccurate in their judgments.
2. **The noxious quality of projection therefore is in the fact it in 85% of cases is wrong,** which is too high of a percentage to not be seen as anything other than noxious. 1. Thus researching and checking assumptions is key to not being noxious.
“**Bramel pointed out that some traits are anxiety provoking because they are dissonant with the concept of self or superego. For example, the thought that one is homosexual provokes anxiety if homosexuality is a trait dissonant with one's superego or concept of self as a "normal" person.** He suggested that the attribution or projection of the trait onto others can in a number of ways facilitate the reduction of the cognitive dissonance with a consequent reduction of anxiety.
1. **By attributing it to respected people, the projector may enable himself to re-evaluate the trait. If respected persons possess it, then perhaps it is not so bad a thing after all.”**
2. “Further, as predicted, the high-dissonance group projected the homosexuality only to those whom they had previously evaluated quite favorably.”
1. When a trait could not be denied, people were more likely to project it onto someone socially respected/socially safe/socially desirable in a sort of **psychological “human shield”** that resulted from the inability to deny the evidence if too strongly measured.
2. If it were easy for the subjects to deny that they actually had the trait, there would be no reason to project the trait onto their friends in an effort to change the trait's evaluation or their position with regard to their friends. In fact, projecting the negative trait onto their friends would be threatening, because this would imply that the subjects might also have the trait. 1. **“The authors concluded that "Attribution to a friend partially resolves imbalance (dissonance) by shifting the scale referents for the trait, using the friend as an anchor point [p. 442]."**
When information about test precision was included, people did not project the trait onto socially respected/socially safe/socially desirable others because it no longer served its purpose of making it seem “less bad” if it was in them. **Therefore, it no longer served to make them retain their positive self-image as normal even if there was strong evidence of abnormality.**
1. ("He said that the test might have been wrong. It is clear then that I don't have the trait and neither do others who are like me.") On the other hand, subjects who did not accept the dissonant information in the difficult-denial condition attributed most of the negative trait to similar others. ("He said the test was probably correct. However, I still don't think I have the trait but if I do have it, it wouldn't be so bad because others who are like me have it.")
1. “In terms of personality judgments, this suggests that in judging another person who is relatively similar to the subject in terms of personality, **the subject would tend to see the other person as more like himself t*****han the other person actually was****.*”
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1. “Individuals attribute their traits, beliefs, and motivations to others in order to avoid the possibility of dissonance or the anxiety-provoking situation of seeing themselves as different either from their valued reference group or from others who are similar to themselves.”
2. **It is especially noxious and narcissistic if the person tries again and again to assert the projection of their own thought processes on the object they aspire to/respect/admire/desire in an attempt to resolve dissonance that this object of their admiration/respect/desire is not like them at all, and therefore those things that they admire so much may not be things they themselves possess at all.** 1. This is painful to someone in their ego defense, which is where the narcissist is primarily found.
3. Projection is immediate, it is not rationalization. The projector genuinely believes what they project is true of the projected on object, **thus the disturbing quality of projection that is often reported when it occurs.** 1. “1. Feelings of guilt aroused by selfishness lead the child to minimize his own "sin" by attributing selfishness to others. The more selfish he is, the more he needs to justify his misconduct, [dissonance-defense hypothesis] 2. **No question of rationalization enters. Rather the child sees others in his own image** [generalization hypothesis] [p. 229].”
1. :”Another explanation revolved around the idea that the directions to suppress the feelings caused more anxiety or conflict over the feelings and this may have resulted in the trend toward more projection.”
2. This is the narcissistic scapegoat.
Freud’s original hypothesis, that we project our unconscious desires on others, has some grounding in an experiment where ***the suspicion of traits in oneself began to form and reach consciousness through projection.***
1. The results of the second analysis of Rokeach's (1945) data deserve some further comment. First of all, Rokeach found that independent of degree of insight, subjects "tend to rate others objectively providing they (the judges) possess beauty to a high degree [p. 169]**." Rokeach suggested that "objectivity in evaluating others will not be 'violated' unless such objectivity threatens to become a barrier to achieving and maintaining an adequate self-esteem level** 1. This explains “**trip the prom queen” syndrome where women who suspect they are less attractive are more likely to try to have unwarranted skepticism about the attractiveness of women it is clear are most attractive.** 1. For instance, nitpicking about the features of Angelina Jolie or Amber Heard can be witnessed anywhere online. So can the surprising profit generated by bad pictures of celebrities in workout clothes. 2. **Girls that are attractive feel no ego threat saying that other girls are very attractive easily.** 1. **It was found that people high in a desired trait are more likely to give compliments about that desired trait and disclose sensitive information about that desired trait.** 3. **Girls who feel ego threat giving that much attractiveness to another girl will often opt to lessen or weaken the rating, or even outright insult them.** 4. **“ Beautiful girls can best afford to rate others objectively.”** 5. Interestingly girls who suspected they were unattractive and actually were also were not able to rate well in general, rating themselves even lower than they were while girls that considered themselves genuinely attractive were usually on the mark in the rating experiment. 1. **By rating themselves even lower than what they were rated, they may have been protecting themselves by adapting to the worst case scenario, another ego defensive move.** 6. “**Since the self-ratings of these subjects were inconsistent with the ratings given them by their peers, these subjects were classified as noninsightful and therefore it was concluded that their projection was a function of noninsightfulness** (Rokeach, 1945, p. 168), a conclusion consistent with the concept of similarity projection” 1. The noninsightfulness of projection is its noxious quality.
In all situations, **those who were currently hostile were more likely to start off hostile and project hostility on others from then on out, a**nd were relatively unaware of the fact starting off hostile generates more hostility showing the lack of insight in projection.
1. “The results indicated that in the nonstress situation, hostile-insightful subjects had the highest projected hostility scores. That is, hostile subjects who were aware of their hostility projected more hostility than any other group, a finding which is clear support for the concept of attributive projection discussed earlier.”
1. “Panglossian projection is named for and best exemplified by Voltaire's character Pangloss who, in an attempt to deny or repress the harsh realities of his situation, insisted upon seeing this as "the best of all possible worlds."In theory, this perception protected him from anxiety or grief.”
1. “ On the other hand, the lack of evidence seems to justify extreme caution or abandonment of the interpretive use of this proposed type of projection until or unless some empirical support for it is found.”
1. **Thus the average narcissist is not insightful, which is why it is a “moral disorder” that has no internal incongruity, but has a massive incongruity to the external world–namely not actually being effective with the external world due to noninsightfulness.**
2. ***Projection of beliefs is not empathy, and fails therefore 85% of the time to be accurate. Empathy is accurate and bestowed still at the core of the healthy ego and its self-positive regard of the person engaged in the empathetic feedback loop which is why it is therefore experienced as positive, not painful.***
3. **It can be differentiated by its socially noxious “pronouncement” and “unstudied” features** that inform the term ‘narcissism’ of its inherently resented quality. **This is in stark contrast to the feedback rapport loop of checks and balances of stimuli that occurs during empathy** which has an ongoing researching quality.
Comment by [deleted] at 28/01/2024 at 16:50 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This needs so much more attention!