Between the general public extravaganzas of nowadays’s industry icons and the new trials of outstanding CEOs, narcissistic managers have firmly taken the highlight. In academia, the fascination with the potent mixture of aura and ego that defines narcissistic leaders has fueled just about twenty years of intensive analysis and research. Then again, one of the vital central demanding situations of this paintings is dimension: how are we able to establish and assess narcissism in managers out of doors of the medical surroundings? As a result of it’s hardly ever conceivable to use conventional psychometric assessments to most sensible executives, control scientists have evolved a lot of suave, unobtrusive techniques to spot narcissistic inclinations via gazing habits, language, and public presence.
Narcissism: Its Conventional Size
Consistent with the American Psychiatric Affiliation’s Diagnostic and Statistical Handbook of Psychological Problems (DSM), “narcissistic personality disorder is defined as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (a sense of superiority in fantasy or behavior), a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, beginning in early adulthood and occurring in a variety of contexts. In their 2020 article in the Journal of Management, authors Ormonde Rhees Cragun, Kari Joseph Olsen, and Patrick Michael Wright write that “regardless of their originating in medical psychology, the DSM definition could also be broadly authorised to outline narcissism in its non-clinical shape”.
Analysis in psychology has historically assessed narcissism via self-report assessments or third-party psychometric assessments. As first mentioned via RA Emmons in 1984, the fundamental concept of those assessments is to affiliate easy statements with elements of narcissism. Probably the most broadly used and empirically validated are the 40-item Narcissistic Persona Stock (NPI) and its shorter model, the NPI-16. The NPI asks respondents to make a choice from paired statements reminiscent of “I really like being the center of attention” as opposed to “I’m uncomfortable being the center of attention” and “I’m just like everyone else” as opposed to “I’m an extraordinary person.”
Even though a number of research have administered the NPI immediately to most sensible managers—or tailored it for third-party opinions, asking staff or stakeholders to charge managers in keeping with daily interactions—such approaches stay extraordinarily uncommon because of restricted get entry to to acceptable contributors. Confronted with those barriers, researchers in control and group research have sought other ways to hit upon narcissism in leaders. They started via figuring out behavioral and linguistic cues in CEOs’ authentic communications that may replicate a number of dimensions of narcissism. Extra just lately, on the other hand, the upward push of social media has supplied researchers with new, extra direct alternatives to look at and measure narcissistic habits in actual time.
Recognizing narcissistic characteristics in interviews and authentic communications
One of the most first research to measure managerial narcissism was once evolved via Arijit Chatterjee and Donald C. Hambrick 2007. After consulting with company communications professionals, they adopted Emmons’ concept and recognized 4 doable indicators of narcissism within the public habits of CEOs. Those have been the CEO’s featured footage within the corporate’s annual file; the prominence of the CEO in corporate press releases; the CEO’s use of first-person singular pronouns (eg, me, me, and mine) in interviews; and the CEO’s repayment divided via that of the second one perfect paid government within the company.
Later analysis prolonged this method to new signs, such because the collection of traces in a CEO’s authentic CV or the collection of awards indexed of their self-description. Different research have zoomed in on extra explicit linguistic cues—such because the ratio of singular pronouns to plural pronouns (eg, we, us, and ours) in CEO press releases.
Impressed via findings from psychology, some researchers have even used the dimensions of a CEO’s signature as a proxy for narcissism—a bigger, flashier signature is related to upper ranges of narcissism.
Importantly, many of those research have validated their nonintrusive measures in opposition to conventional character assessments, discovering sturdy correlations with established equipment such because the NPI. This proof means that we will reliably hit upon narcissistic inclinations in leaders via gazing their habits and communique.
How Social Media Finds Narcissistic Characteristics in Managers
In recent times, the upward push of social media has given researchers remarkable alternatives to look at how managers provide themselves to the general public—opening a brand new window into their narcissistic habits. As an example, a up to date learn about via Sebastian Junge, Lorenz Graf-Vlaschi, Moritz Hagen, and Franziska Schlichte analyzed LinkedIn profiles of managers to broaden a multidimensional index of narcissism. Development at the DSM elements of narcissism, the authors recognized 5 profile traits that can sign narcissistic inclinations: collection of government photographs; duration of phase “O”; the collection of indexed skilled studies; the collection of indexed talents; and the collection of specified letters of credit score. They then blended those signs to create an total index of managerial narcissism.
The desk from Junge et al. which maps LinkedIn signs to elements of narcissism and parts from the NPI. Junge et al. (2025), supplied via the creator (no reuse)
True, analysis the usage of most effective social media profiles would possibly center of attention at the maximum narcissistic managers, since much less narcissistic managers would possibly not handle, as an example, a LinkedIn presence. Additionally, social psychology analysis means that social media itself encourages overly narcissistic communique via encouraging self-promotion. To assist cope with those problems, Junge et al. assigned managers with out a LinkedIn profile the bottom conceivable narcissism rating and integrated them of their total research. Their learn about discovered sturdy correlations between the LinkedIn-based measure and previous, nonintrusive measures of CEO narcissistic habits, in addition to conventional psychometric assessments such because the NPI.
The key is encouraging: We do not all the time desire a character check to identify narcissistic leaders—their phrases, footage, and on-line profiles can disclose so much. Those equipment be offering staff, buyers and board participants a solution to higher acknowledge narcissistic inclinations in managers and modify their selections and interactions accordingly. And there’s nonetheless monumental doable for creativity: in keeping with psychologists’ insights into narcissistic habits, shall we discover the psycholinguistic vocabularies of narcissistic rhetoric or even, extra eccentrically, analyze facial options reminiscent of the uniqueness of the eyebrows.
