Leadership Behavior Common With Narcissistic People

A latest study has found that people who tend to be self-centred and Leadership Behavior Common With Narcissistic People overconfident, and always try to over show others by exhibiting their talents and abilities with exaggeration have a good chance to emerge as leaders, due to their controlling power. Such people also lack empathy for others and all these traits when combined together is termed as “Narcissism.”  

The co-author of this study, Amy Brunell, also the assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University at Newark, said, “Not only did narcissists rate themselves as leaders, which you would expect, but other group members also saw them as the people who really run the group.”

Two separate studies conducted by the researchers, also led to the same results, out of which one study involved college students and the second study involved business managers in an MBA program. 

Though it was clear that narcissists are more likely to become leaders, the results of one of the study put forward the fact that once in the position of leadership, they don’t really perform any better than others. 

According to Burnell, “It’s not surprising that narcissists become leaders. They like power, they are egotistical, and they are usually charming and extroverted. But the problem is they don’t necessarily make better leaders.”

The first study took 432 undergraduate students under concideration, who were asked to complete assessments which measured number of personality traits that also included narcissism. Following this, they were divided in four groups and instructed to assume that they are a committee of senior officers of the student union, whose task is to select next year’s director. 

A profile of different candidate was given to each person in the group for the position, and further each member was supposed to argue for their respective candidate. After this, the group members voted on the director, and following this, they completed a questionnaire in order to calculate the leadership of themselves and the other group members.  

When the results were evaluated, it was seen that students who had scored higher on one dimension of narcissism, i.e. desire for power, also tended to say that they wanted to lead the group and group discussions. Surprisingly, these students were also seen as appropriate candidates by the other group members. 

The desire for attention, which forms the second dimension of narcissism, was however not as strongly related to leadership roles in the groups. Brunell informed, “It’s not surprising, but the desire for power is what really drives narcissists to seek leadership positions.”

This study is due to appear in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin’s forthcoming issue. 

General: