Archive for December, 2008

Narcissism and emergent leadership

Published December 23, 2008 leadership , research Leave a Comment

The link between narcissism and leadership has been discussed since the early days of narcissism research. There has been a long debate about whether narcissism is good or bad for leadership. The answer is that it is probably both. One of the major benefits of narcissism is that it predicts leadership emergence. That is, more narcissistic individuals are likely to rise to leadership positions. They might be a disaster once they get there, unfortunately, but they will rise nonetheless. In a study published this month, leadership emergence was examined in samples of students and executives. Not only did the more narcissistic individuals in the groups see themselves as leaders, but the others in the group (and even observers in one study) saw the narcissistic individuals as leaders. When people seem to rise too easily into leadership positions, we need to be especially vigilant for narcissistic behaviors.

For the full study, see:

Brunell, A. B., Gentry, W. A., Campbell, W. K., Hoffman, B. J., Kuhnert, K. W., & DeMarree, K. G. (2008). Leader emergence: The case of the narcissistic leader. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1663-1676.

Narcissism and aggression in children

Published December 20, 2008 education , research Leave a Comment

Researchers have know for over a decade that high narcissism coupled with ego-threat leads to aggression. The vast majority of this research, however, has been done with adults. A new study published in Child Development is the first I know of to show the link between narcissism and aggression in children using an experimental task. Children were told they were playing a computer game against a terrible player (versus a control condition). There was no other player, of course, just a computer program. The children then were told they lost the game. The children were next given the chance to blast the player who beat them with loud noise (the aggression measure). The researchers found that the strongest noise blasts were made by the narcissistic children who felt ashamed from losing to the terrible player. Furthermore, the researchers also measured self-esteem, and found that children who had a combination of high narcissism and high self-esteem showed the absolute highest levels of aggression.

Hopefully those in the education field who think teaching children that they are special is an effective strategy for reducing aggression will give some thought to these findings.

Press release

The full study can be found here:

Thomaes, S., Bushman, B. J., Stegge, H.,  Olthof, T. (2008). Trumping shame by blasts of noise: Narcissism, self-esteem, shame, and aggression in young adolescents. Child Development, 79, 1792-1801.