The New Science of Narcissism: Understanding One of the Greatest Psychological Challenges of Our Time—and What You Can Do About It by Keith W. Campbell

Author:Keith W. Campbell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Cultural Studies, Psychology, Social Science, Health & Well Being, Emotions, Self Help, Nonfiction, Self-Help, Social Psychology, Personality, Popular Culture, Social & Cultural Studies
ISBN: 9781683644026
Publisher: Sounds True
Published: 2020-09-22T07:00:00+00:00

The New Science of Narcissism

Leaders who exhibit both types of narcissism may not do well either.

Bob Hogan, a well- known personality psychologist and industrial psychologist, has said that this is the worst combination he sees when working with high- level executives. People who are highly narcissistic but also neurotic and vulnerable take slights easily and are immune to criticism. They go off the handle. They throw things. People who are power hungry but also have thin skins are a problem.

On the other hand, grandiose narcissists tend to do reasonably well. The combination of high extraversion and flat agreeableness matches with the personality traits for emergent leadership. This doesn’t mean that anyone who wants to be a leader is going to be narcissistic. Rather, high extraversion shown by narcissists often obscures the low agreeableness, and the result can be leaders who are more callous or self- serving than you might want.

This same pattern occurs in formal assessment centers and leaderless group paradigms. Study teams give four executives or business students a working portfolio, for example, where they discuss a case for an hour.

Then they watch who emerges as a leader. Even in assessment centers

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Leadership and Narcissism

designed to select the best potential leaders, at least in our research, narcissists are more likely to step up as leaders.

As a result, narcissistic leaders emerge in all types of systems, including churches. In a 2014 study in Canada, grandiose narcissism was associated with larger congregations—and becoming heads of big churches.5

Similarly in India, “god men,” or proclaimed holy men, amass a large amount of control. Some of these people may indeed be holy men, and some may not, but the challenge is that the only people willing to claim that they are holy men are those who are incredibly narcissistic or those who are actually holy, and it can be tough for followers to gauge.

EMERGENT LEADERSHIP:

DOMINANCE VERSUS PRESTIGE

Additional factors that spur leaders to emerge are dominance, prestige, and pride within a role. This always prompts me to think about General George Patton and his style of leadership. When I began working at the University of Georgia, I was enthralled by the stories that my colleague, an emeritus professor and social psychologist named Sid Rosen, told me about his days in the Tank Corps during World War II before he joined academia. Rosen was involved in the invasion of Italy and fought with Patton and General Omar Bradley, who succeeded Patton. When he told me that it was terrible to fight under Patton, I was surprised because the general seemed confident and sure of himself. He stood up alone against a German plane and had old pistols. He looked like a leader.

What I learned, though, was that serving under Patton meant dealing with a narcissistic general who put his needs before others. As Sid said, the US tanks were no match for the German tanks, so the corps would up-armor their tanks to fight. They’d add sandbags, barbed wire, and anything else they could find to make them sturdier.

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