the bright side of threatened narcissism improved performance following ego threat narcissistic individuals have highly positive selfviews and overestimate their abilities consequently they tend to react aggressively whenever they receive information that does not match their high selfviews ego threat we argue that focusing on aggression merely portrays a onesided view of narcissistic individuals and the manner in which they counter ego threats we propose that following ego threat narcissism can also fuel performance in four studies we measured nonclinical narcissism and allocated dutch undergraduate university students n1 175 n2 142 n3 159 n4 174 to either an ego threat or a no ego threat condition ego threat involved negative feedback studies 12 or threat to uniqueness studies 34 we measured participants intentions to complete a challenging task study 1 their creative performance studies 23 and their performance on an anagram task study 4 across studies 13 we consistently found that following ego threat higher nonclinical narcissism was associated with greater willingness to perform tasks that enabled demonstration of abilities and enhanced creative performance these results were confirmed using a metaanalysis however anagram performance was not enhanced following ego threat we provide additional analyses that might help explain this our findings thus reveal a more positive side to the way narcissistic individuals manage threats to their selfimage