Narcissism, Relationship Commitment, Attention to Alternatives, and Social Media
Rewiring the relationship brain
Back in graduate school, my friend Craig and I were doing some research on narcissism and relationship commitment. The hypothesis was that we would find higher grandiose narcissism associated with less relationship commitment. The more interesting question was why this might happen.
It turns out we have a pretty useful model of relationship commitment called the investment model. The model outlines three predictors of commitment in a relationship.
The first and most obvious is relationship satisfaction. If you are satisfied in your relationship and like your partner, you will probably want to stay. But it’s not that simple.
The second piece—where the model gets its name—is relationship investment. If you have a lot invested in a relationship—say you have a family together, own a home, share a network of friends, or have a joint bank account—you are going to be more committed. People may not think about this when they first fall in love, but after years with a partner, the investments can be quite large. In a divorce, dividing up everything created in a marriage is what takes the lawyers and judges; and, you’ll meet people who stay married because they can’t afford to divorce.
Finally, there are alternatives. Even if I am satisfied with my partner and have invested a lot in the relationship, I still could find someone else who seems more attractive.
There are a couple of ways to think about alternatives. One is simply the quality of who is out there in the world—or even the desirability of being single. The other way is the degree to which people pay attention to potential alternative partners, called attention to alternatives in the research literature.
Imagine its the 1980s and you’re at a bar in Huntington Beach. Guy in town for a convention walks in looking like Don Johnson from Miami Vice, lowers his Wayfarers, and scans the room because his wife is back in Topeka. That is attention to alternatives.
So, back to narcissism. On average, narcissism is associated with lower commitment in relationships. When you look at why, it’s not satisfaction or investment that really explains the link—it’s alternatives. Basically, more narcissism means you see more potential relationship partners out there for you. And it’s easy to imagine one reason why is that narcissists overestimate their own mate value. So, if you think you’re a 10, you’re naturally going to assume you will fetch a lot of interest on the dating market.
But what really stands out with narcissism is attention to alternatives. Basically, individuals who are more narcissistic are more likely to notice, flirt with, and try to get to know other potential partners. (And I should specify grandiose narcissism here; much of this is grounded in extraversion).
What does this have to do with social media? Social media magnifies the average person’s social network and this increases the number of alternative partners. This should theoretically lower people’s relationship commitment levels, on average.
The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily work this way for everyone, because there seems to be an evolved mechanism by which we pay much less attention to alternative relationship partners when we are in a committed relationship.
But with narcissism, you see a few issues. First, narcissists have larger online social networks; they are more connected (again, this is largely attention-seeking and extraversion).
Second, we are starting to see research on commitment and online alternative partners. A paper from last year reported a correlation of r = .53 between online attention to alternatives and infidelity. This is a pretty decent correlation size.
Additionally, attention to alternatives and quality of alternatives correlated at r = .36, so the perception of quality alternatives and attention to alternatives have a modest correlation, but they are not the same thing. You can have a great assortment of potential alternative partners and just not pay that much attention to them because you are committed. Unless your ego gets the better of you.
Where things get a little weird is online dating apps. In that case, every user is being channeled into attending to alternatives. Basically, you scroll through and select from a list of potential mates. Back in the 1980s, the narcissistic guy walking through a bar, scanning all the women, was the outlier. Now, everybody on a dating app is doing the same thing.
These apps are awesome if you are narcissistic and into low romantic commitment. They aren’t as awesome if you want commitment. It can happen, of course, but it wouldn’t be Plan A. My concern is that repeated, tech mediated attention to alternatives is going to make settling down and committing harder for everyone — not just narcissists. Now everyone is seeing the dating market a bit like Huntington Beach Don Johnson.
Links to my work: Homepage; Peterson Academy; Books on Amazon
Some Citations
Campbell, W. K., & Foster, C. A. (2002). Narcissism and commitment in romantic relationships: An investment model analysis. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 28(4), 484-495.
Foster, J. D., Shrira, I., & Campbell, W. K. (2006). Theoretical models of narcissism, sexuality, and relationship commitment. Journal of social and Personal Relationships, 23(3), 367-386.
Miller, R. S. (1997). Inattentive and contented: Relationship commitment and attention to alternatives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(4), 758-766.
Maner, J. K., Rouby, D. A., & Gonzaga, G. C. (2008). Automatic inattention to attractive alternatives: The evolved psychology of relationship maintenance. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(5), 343-349.
McCain, J. L., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Narcissism and social media use: A meta-analytic review. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 7(3), 308-327.
Nascimento, B. S., Adair, L., & Vione, K. (2024). Pathways to online infidelity: The roles of perceived online dating success, perceived availability of alternative partners, and mate value discrepancy. Current Psychology, 43(14), 12782-12793.
I sense a change in the culture where people are more aware of narcissism and less likely to put up with it. I would think that 50 years ago, many narcissists (especially men) were able to get away with finding a spouse while carrying on with affairs. But these days, women are more economically independent and less willing to put up with it. Also, marrying later in life, they are probably more aware of narcissism and less likely to enter the relationship in the first place.
So I wonder if three factors are at play: narcissists struggle with commitment, dating apps emphasize alternatives, people (mostly women) are less likely to commit to a narcissist. What do you think?
im curious about your take on relations that are both committed AND promiscuous, like open relationships, polyamory , thruples, swinger parties, etc. . I have experimented with a committed threesome for several months and many of my friends in the lgbt community are both married and go on grindr regularly ( its not cheating because theyre honest about their sexual activity ) . This is not new behvaior either. Europeans are famous for being married and having a mistress at the same time ( though this seemed more like chauvinism than sexual liberation in the previous century) . While i agree with your correlations between narcissism and lack of commitment, there is this place where promiscuity and commitment coexist .
My therapist doesnt believe this hybrid position really exists since anything romantic outside a committed relationship symbolizes abandonment, part objects , splitting , etc . but other research suggests some people are sexually wired for multiple partners even though they do choose one mate. the pathology there seems to be about dishonesty , and not behavior.
i dont know if this issue has an answer either
always appreciate your posts