Most of us belong to groups we feel proud of – a nation, a faith, a profession, a football club. Feeling good about your group is normal and, for the most part, healthy. But there is a particular way of relating to a group that looks like pride on the surface and works like something very different underneath. Psychologists call it collective narcissism, and once you understand it, you start to see it everywhere.
What Collective Narcissism Is
Collective narcissism is defined as an emotional investment in an unrealistic belief about the greatness of one’s in-group – a conviction that one’s group is exceptional and entitled to special treatment, combined with a resentful sense that other people do not recognize this greatness enough (Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, Eidelson, & Jayawickreme, 2009). It is the group-level echo of individual narcissism: just as a narcissistic person craves constant admiration and feels wounded when it is withheld, a collective narcissist demands that the world acknowledge the superiority of their group, and feels aggrieved when that acknowledgment doesn’t come.
The crucial word is “unrealistic.” Collective narcissism is not simply believing your group is good. It is an exaggerated, inflated belief that also depends on external validation – the group’s greatness must be seen, praised, and deferred to by others, or something feels wrong.
It Is Not the Same as Loving Your Group
This is the distinction that matters most, and it is easy to miss. Feeling attached to your nation, satisfied with your group, or confident in your shared identity is not collective narcissism. Researchers carefully separate collective narcissism from what they call secure, or non-narcissistic, in-group identification – a positive, confident bond with one’s group that does not depend on others’ approval (Cichocka, 2016; Golec de Zavala, Dyduch-Hazar, & Lantos, 2019). The difference is defensiveness. Secure group identification is like healthy self-esteem: you value your group, but you are not threatened when someone criticizes it, and you can acknowledge its faults without feeling personally attacked. Collective narcissism is the opposite – a fragile, defensive stance in which any criticism of the group feels like an intolerable insult, and any lack of recognition feels like a deliberate slight.
Statistically, the two can even be separated out: when researchers measure both at once and account for the overlap, it is collective narcissism, not secure identification, that predicts hostility toward other groups (Golec de Zavala et al., 2019). In fact, once you remove the narcissistic component, ordinary in-group pride is associated with more tolerance, not less. The same love of a group can point in opposite directions depending on whether it is secure or narcissistic.
How It Is Measured
Collective narcissism is assessed with the Collective Narcissism Scale, originally a 9-item self-report questionnaire (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009), later also used in shorter 5-item and even 3-item versions (Golec de Zavala, 2011; Golec de Zavala et al., 2013). Respondents rate their agreement with a series of statements about their group on a Likert scale, typically from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”
The items capture the core features of the construct – inflated group image, entitlement, and a resentful hunger for recognition. Representative items include statements to the effect that one’s group deserves special treatment, that one will never be satisfied until the group gets the recognition it deserves, that not many people seem to fully understand the importance of one’s group, and that the true worth of one’s group is often misunderstood. The scale can be applied to almost any group by simply substituting the relevant identity – a nation, a religious community, a political movement – which is part of why it has been used so widely.
Psychometrically, the scale has performed well across many countries and languages, showing good reliability and, importantly, measurement invariance across cultures – meaning it appears to measure the same underlying concept in different national contexts (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009; and subsequent cross-cultural work). It has been adapted into numerous languages, from Polish and Turkish to Spanish and Russian.
Why It Matters: The Consequences
Collective narcissism would be a psychological curiosity if it stayed inside people’s heads. It does not. A substantial body of research links it to a consistent pattern of intergroup problems.
The most robust finding is that collective narcissism predicts intergroup hostility – prejudice, negative attitudes toward out-groups, and support for aggressive or coercive action against them (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009; Golec de Zavala & Lantos, 2020). Collective narcissists are hypersensitive to threat: they perceive insults and attacks on their group where others see none, and they are inclined to retaliate against both real and imagined offenses (Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, & Iskra-Golec, 2013).
It is also strongly tied to conspiracy thinking. People high in collective narcissism are prone to believe that out-groups are secretly plotting against their group – a pattern documented across different countries and target groups (Cichocka, Marchlewska, Golec de Zavala, & Olechowski, 2016; Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2012). The group’s image is defended not only against criticism but against inconvenient facts, which makes conspiracy narratives attractive.
Perhaps the most revealing finding concerns what sits underneath collective narcissism. Rather than reflecting genuine strength or confidence, it is consistently associated with low personal self-esteem, a low sense of control, and vulnerable narcissism (Golec de Zavala, 2019; Golec de Zavala & Lantos, 2020). The evidence suggests that collective narcissism works as an unsuccessful compensation for wounded individual self-worth: people who feel personally unrecognized invest their frustrated need for importance into the group, and then demand on the group’s behalf the recognition they feel denied as individuals. It does not heal the underlying insecurity – it feeds a self-reinforcing cycle of grievance and hostility.
A Note on the Georgian Context
What about Georgia? Here I want to be careful and make no claims. To my knowledge there is not yet a validated Georgian adaptation of the Collective Narcissism Scale, which means we simply do not have the data to say anything responsible about levels of collective narcissism in the Georgian population. Anything else would be speculation.
What I can say is that these are open and worthwhile empirical questions, and that proper measurement would have to come first. Adapting and validating the Collective Narcissism Scale in Georgian – following the careful translation, back-translation, and psychometric validation process that cross-cultural measurement demands – is something I intend to work on. Only after that would it be meaningful to study how collective narcissism relates to intergroup attitudes in the Georgian context. Until the instrument exists and is validated here, the honest position is a set of hypotheses, nothing more.
The Takeaway
The single most useful idea to carry away is this: collective narcissism is not love of your group, and it is not the same as pride or belonging. It is a defensive, insecure, never-satisfied demand that others recognize your group’s greatness – and that defensiveness is exactly what makes it corrosive. It predicts seeing enemies everywhere, believing in conspiracies, and lashing out at other groups, and it tends to grow from personal insecurity rather than real strength.
The healthier alternative is not to care less about your group. It is secure identification: a confident, grounded attachment that can withstand criticism, admit the group’s flaws, and feel no need for constant external validation. A person secure in their group identity can love their nation and still listen to its critics. A collective narcissist cannot, because for them the criticism is the threat.
Learning to notice the difference – in public rhetoric, in the way groups talk about themselves, and honestly in ourselves – is one of the more quietly valuable things social psychology has to offer. The feeling can look identical from the outside. What distinguishes them is what happens when the group is questioned.
References
Cichocka, A. (2016). Understanding defensive and secure in-group positivity: The role of collective narcissism. European Review of Social Psychology, 27(1), 283-317.
Cichocka, A., Marchlewska, M., Golec de Zavala, A., & Olechowski, M. (2016). “They will not control us”: Ingroup positivity and belief in intergroup conspiracies. British Journal of Psychology, 107(3), 556-576.
Golec de Zavala, A. (2011). Collective narcissism and intergroup hostility: The dark side of “in-group love.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(6), 309-320.
Golec de Zavala, A. (2019). Collective narcissism: Political consequences of investing self-worth in the ingroup’s image. Political Psychology, 40(S1), 37-74.
Golec de Zavala, A., & Cichocka, A. (2012). Collective narcissism and anti-Semitism in Poland. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15(2), 213-229.
Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., Eidelson, R., & Jayawickreme, N. (2009). Collective narcissism and its social consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 1074-1096.
Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., & Iskra-Golec, I. (2013). Collective narcissism moderates the effect of in-group image threat on intergroup hostility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(6), 1019-1039.
Golec de Zavala, A., Dyduch-Hazar, K., & Lantos, D. (2019). Collective narcissism: Political consequences of investing self-worth in the ingroup’s image. Political Psychology, 40(S1), 37-74.
Golec de Zavala, A., & Lantos, D. (2020). Collective narcissism and its social consequences: The bad and the ugly. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 273-278.
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Giorgi Tchumburidze
October, 2026