Narcissistic admiration, narcissistic rivalry, and rest intolerance among Chinese undergraduates: statistical indirect associations via perceived stress

Rest intolerance is an emerging psychological construct that has garnered growing research attention among college student populations. It refers to negative affective experiences, such as guilt and anxiety, that occur when individuals disengage from goal-oriented or academic tasks, with pronounced individual variability. Narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry are two interrelated yet distinct subdimensions of narcissism, which may show differential associations with rest intolerance. Nevertheless, whether perceived stress is statistically associated with indirect associations between the two narcissistic facets and rest intolerance remains unclear. Grounded in the Transactional Model of Stress, this cross-sectional study explored the statistical indirect associations between narcissistic admiration, narcissistic rivalry, and undergraduate students’ rest intolerance, with perceived stress as a potential explanatory variable. A total of 3,396 Chinese undergraduate students completed the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire–Short Scale (NARQ-S), the 4-Item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4), and the 8-Item Rest Intolerance Scale (RIS-8). We first used Pearson’s correlation coefficient to examine the correlations among the variables. Subsequently, we employed structural equation modeling to assess the reliability and validity of the scales as well as the associations between the variables, and employed the Bootstrap procedure with 5000 resamples to evaluate the statistical significance of indirect statistical associations. The results revealed that perceived stress yielded significant statistical indirect associations linking the two narcissistic subdimensions to rest intolerance. Specifically, narcissistic rivalry exhibited a positive indirect statistical association with rest intolerance via perceived stress (indirect effect = 0.224, 95% CI: 0.193–0.260). In contrast, narcissistic admiration showed a negative indirect statistical association with rest intolerance through perceived stress (indirect effect = − 0.087, 95% CI: −0.109–−0.069). Correlation analyses further indicated that the zero-order association between narcissistic admiration and perceived stress was positive, while this association turned negative after controlling for narcissistic rivalry. Additionally, narcissistic admiration demonstrated offsetting statistical associations with rest intolerance, characterized by a positive direct association and a contradictory negative indirect association, forming a competitive partial statistical mediation pattern. Although causality cannot be inferred from this cross-sectional study, narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry showed differential associations with perceived stress, consistent with the proposed “double-edged sword” pattern of narcissism. Perceived stress showed statistical indirect associations in the relationships between both narcissistic dimensions and rest intolerance. These findings may provide a basis for future research on rest intolerance among undergraduates with different narcissistic traits.