Objective The provision of information appears to be an important feature of self‐esteem. The present studies examined whether self‐esteem possesses a status‐signaling property such that an individual's level of self‐esteem is associated with how the individual is perceived by others. Method In Study 1, trained judges watched brief videos of 157 participants and rated targets as having higher levels of self‐esteem when the targets were believed to possess more positive personality characteristics. Study 2 found that participants (357 targets) were rated as having higher levels of self‐esteem when they were given more positive personality evaluations by their friends and family members (1,615 perceivers). Results Consistent with the proposed status‐signaling model, high levels of self‐esteem were generally associated with the perception of positive personality characteristics. Conclusions These findings are discussed in the context of an extended informational model of self‐esteem consisting of both the status‐tracking and status‐signaling properties of self‐esteem.

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Previous studies have found that narcissistic individuals are often viewed negatively by those who know them well. The present study sought to extend these previous findings by examining whether normal and pathological aspects of narcissism were associated with perceiver ratings of narcissistic characteristics and aggression. This was accomplished by having each of our undergraduate participants (288 targets) recruit friends or family members to complete ratings of the target who recruited them (1,296 perceivers). Results revealed that perceived entitlement was strongly associated with perceived aggression. Further, self-reported levels of pathological narcissism moderated these results such that vulnerable narcissism exacerbated the association between perceived entitlement and aggression, whereas grandiose narcissism mitigated the association. The discussion will focus on the implications of these results for understanding the various features of narcissism.

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