Narcissistic ingroup love in Europe

Threat, identity indispensability and extreme forms of national identification: The major proposition of this research is that the increase of extreme forms of identification with national groups is a response to perceived identity threats’ in a context of a common European identity in which countries do not feel equally indispensable. When groups perceive themselves as dispensable, a defensive, narcissistic ingroup positivity will trigger retaliatory hostility when the ingroup´s identity is threatened. On the contrary, perceiving the ingroup as indispensable to a given common identity promotes a secure and non-narcissistic ingroup positivity, thus precluding collective narcissism and its negative effects.