The Excessive Need to Matter

Is it possible to matter too much? This Psychology Today article, written by Scott Barry Kaufman, dives into the human need to matter.

View the full article here.

The need to matter—to feel valued, appreciated, and important to other people—is one of the strongest and most universal needs in the human need repertoire. Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein calls it the "mattering instinct." Buckets of research suggest the positive benefits of feeling a sense of mattering, including higher well-being, life satisfaction, purpose, meaning, and social connectedness. However, is it possible to matter too much?

Psychologist (and fellow PT contributor) Isaac Prilleltensky has devoted his career to understanding the relationship between a need to matter and well-being. While he believes in well-being for all, and is deeply interested in fairness, he told me on my podcast that he believes some people matter too much. By this, he means that some people take up too much space, grabbing the spotlight from other diverse populations and not giving anything back to society.

If this sounds like narcissism, you're not alone. In a recent scientific article, psychologist Gordon Flett and his colleagues argue that an excessive need to matter is at the heart of pathological narcissism. It has already been documented that there is a rising tide of narcissism in our society. Flett and colleagues proposed the provoking idea that "pathological narcissism involves an excessive need to matter and a hypersensitivity to being devaluated and not mattering to other people."

To evaluate this idea, they administered tests of mattering to a sample of 168 university students in Canada. One test of "general mattering" measured perceptions and feelings of being important to people ("e.g., "How much would you be missed if you went away?"). Another test of "anti-mattering" measured the degree to which people feel like they do not matter to others (e.g., "How often have you been treated in a way that makes you feel like you are insignificant?").

They also included a measure of pathological narcissism which distinguished between narcissistic grandiosity (feeling entitled to special privileges due to feelings of inherent superiority) and narcissistic vulnerability (feeling entitled to special privileges due to one's suffering or fragility). What did they find?

First, as expected, the anti-mattering scale was negatively correlated with the general mattering scale. This makes sense: Those who feel a greater deprivation of mattering in their lives are going to be likely to also report a low sense of general mattering in their life.

Second, they found some interesting links with pathological narcissism. While anti-mattering and narcissistic grandiosity were significantly correlated with each other, an even stronger link was found between anti-mattering and narcissistic vulnerability. Anti-mattering was particularly linked to the "contingent self-esteem" and "hiding the self" facets of narcissistic vulnerability.

They also found a significant association between anti-mattering and entitlement rage, which can be defined as "intense anger, aggression, or passive-aggression when a narcissist experiences a setback or disappointment that shatters his (or her) illusions of grandiosity, entitlement, and superiority, and triggers inner inadequacy, shame, and vulnerability." In contrast, the general mattering scale was barely associated with any form of pathological narcissism.

The implication on health were clear: Anti-mattering was significantly correlated with higher levels of depression. In line with my prior research, there was a stronger link between depression and narcissistic vulnerability than there was between depression and narcissistic grandiosity. The researchers went further, though, to find that anti-mattering really mattered in explaining this relationship: Narcissistic vulnerability was positively associated with anti-mattering, which was, in turn, associated with greater depression.

The Healthy Need to Matter

This research has some deep implications. For one, the findings suggest the likelihood that people high in vulnerable narcissism have a hypersensitivity to cues and situations that make them feel like others are not valuing them as much as they feel they need. For these individuals there's a certain overreliance on the respect of others in order for the person to feel worthy and competent as a human being. This was evidenced in the strong correlation between contingent self-esteem and the anti-mattering scale.

Since vulnerable narcissism is associated with deep insecurity and shame, the incessant, never-ending quest to get respect from others may lead to depression since it's virtually impossible to impose on everyone that one must receive respect and appreciation, especially for no other reason than that you demand it.

A better therapeutic approach to help people who suffer with vulnerable narcissism is to help them find a more stable sense of inner worth and work on their healthy assertiveness and capacity to live authentically. Indeed, the results of this study suggest that many people feel as though they don't matter to others yet they keep their feeling and emotions hidden, so people may not realize the sense of disconnection they may be feeling.

Instead of hiding yourself and your negative feelings, a healthier approach would be to develop the skills to assert your needs more effectively and contribute positively to society so that you can have a more stable, deep, and abiding sense of competency in life.

Another issue for those who score high in vulnerable narcissism is that they tend to have identity disturbance issues—they tend to not know who they really are and may cling on to some identities as a way for them to cope with their deep feeling of emptiness. However, a healthy need to matter is one where you don't require acceptance from others for your identity, and can show yourself a bit more self-validation on a regular basis so that you can feel a more stable sense of self.

There are also deep implications for society more broadly. The correlation between a sense of anti-mattering and entitlement rage suggests that when the need to matter is severely unmet, it can lead to destructive outcomes. For some individuals, feelings of anti-mattering could be combined with not only narcissistic vulnerability but also with exploitative antagonism.

Helping people more constructively channel their unmet need to matter is not only an individual responsibility. In his work on mattering and well-being, Prilleltensky emphasizes that the need to matter is not just an individual need but is also a social need. He believes that societies and communities have a responsibility to create conditions that allow people to feel that they matter and are valued. He believes that when people feel they matter, they are more likely to engage in activities that benefit the community as a whole, leading to greater social cohesion and well-being for everyone.

I would go a step further and argue that a truly self-actualizing society is one in which all inhabitants aren't solely obsessed with mattering themselves but also spend just as much time and effort listening to others and helping others feel as though they matter as well. A self-actualizing society would be one where people are just as interested in giving back to society as they are in receiving respect from others.

The great, late positive psychologist Chris Peterson frequently used the phrase "other people matter." Imagine if more people in our society actually believed that?