Climbing the corporate ladder and within-person changes in narcissism: Reciprocal relationships over two decades

Wille, Bart; Hofmans, Joeri; Lievens, Filip; Back, Mitja D.; Fruyt, Filip De

doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2019.103341

Cited by 26 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Moreover, recent research indicates that trait levels tend to be dynamic over time and, interestingly, that increases in narcissism co‐develop with hierarchical advancement (Wille, Hofmans, Lievens, Back, & De Fruyt, 2019). Those findings indicate that individuals who become more narcissistic over time also tend to climb the hierarchical ladder.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manager narcissism and employee silence: A socio‐analytic theory perspective

Hamstra

Schreurs

Jawahar

et al. 2021

J Occupat & Organ Psyc

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Employee silence is detrimental to organizations, and managers high in narcissism may create conditions that indirectly promote employee silence. Drawing on socio‐analytic theory, in three samples (Ns = 79, 125, and 119), we investigated whether employees’ perceptions of manager trustworthiness mediated the relation between manager trait narcissism and employee silence, and whether this mediation was moderated by a social skill, apparent sincerity. We found that the three samples largely supported our research model. Manager narcissism lowered employees’ perceptions of manager trustworthiness, which were in turn related to increased employee silence. Whereas the effect of narcissism on trustworthiness perceptions and, indirectly, on employee silence were stronger for managers lower in apparent sincerity, these effects of narcissism were absent for managers high in apparent sincerity. Practitioner points Perceptions of manager trustworthiness are a key relational process in dyadic, leader–follower relationships; for example, as our studies show, low trustworthiness predicts employee silence about important issues that may be hampering work/organizational functioning. Furthermore, our studies show that manager trait narcissism drives employees’ perceptions of their manager’s trustworthiness, and indirectly, employee silence. The findings highlight the downsides of manager narcissism in dyadic relationships with employees, which prompts guarding against hiring and promoting individuals who are high in trait narcissism to management positions. Moreover, we find that high narcissism managers who seek to appear sincere, may be successful at mitigating the impact of their narcissism on trustworthiness and silence. The findings lead us to recommend managers to improve their sincerity impression management skills – not doing so may be particularly detrimental among those who are more narcissistic.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manager narcissism and employee silence: A socio‐analytic theory perspective

Hamstra

Schreurs

Jawahar

et al. 2021

J Occupat & Organ Psyc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…And would their success be driven by their agentic or antagonistic traits (Leckelt et al, 2015)? Research has begun to examine how adults with relatively high narcissism levels attain career success, and how success, in turn, shapes them (Wille, Hofmans, Lievens, Back, & De Fruyt, 2019). Addressing these issues will elucidate how narcissism levels and leadership intersect across the life span.…”

Section: Strengths Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narcissism and Leadership in Children

2021

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Some leaders display high levels of narcissism. Does the link between narcissism levels and leadership exist in childhood? We conducted, to our knowledge, the first study of the relationship between narcissism levels and various aspects of leadership in children ( N = 332, ages 7–14 years). We assessed narcissism levels using the Childhood Narcissism Scale and assessed leadership emergence in classrooms using peer nominations. Children then performed a group task in which one child was randomly assigned as leader. We assessed perceived and actual leadership functioning. Children with higher narcissism levels more often emerged as leaders in classrooms. When given a leadership role in the task, children with higher narcissism levels perceived themselves as better leaders, but their actual leadership functioning did not differ significantly from that of other leaders. Specification-curve analyses corroborated these findings. Thus, children with relatively high narcissism levels tend to emerge as leaders, even though they may not excel as leaders.

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“…A certain level of competitive or antagonistic behavior might prove beneficial (Spurk et al, 2016) and might be viewed as more desirable at this stage of life (Berenson et al, 2017). However, being responsible, reliable, and socially integrated becomes more important with increasing age (Roberts & Wood, 2006) or, in other words, transgressive and normviolating behavior could have negative consequences at the workplace (O'Boyle et al, 2012; but see Wille et al, 2019) as well as in romantic relationships (Ali & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010;Jonason et al, 2012).…”

Section: Age-associated Mean Trends In Socially Aversive Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The few findings regarding traits different from narcissism in community samples essentially point to a decreasing trend in socially aversive personality traits (e.g., Blonigen et al, 2006;Grosz et al, 2019;, including a mean-level decrease of about a third of a standard deviation of the D factor over a four-year period . Longitudinal studies on narcissism show that individual age trends vary a lot (e.g., Wille et al, 2019). Findings on mean level changes range from significant increase to significant decrease depending on the age range and the facets of narcissism that were studied (Carlson & Gjerde, 2009;Chopik & Grimm, 2019;Grosz et al, 2019;Wetzel et al, 2019;Wille et al, 2019).…”

Section: Age-associated Mean Trends In Socially Aversive Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Age and gender differences in socially aversive (“dark”) personality traits

Härtung¹,

Bader²,

Moshagen³

et al. 2021

Eur J Pers

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The strong overlap of personality traits discussed under the label of “dark personality” (e.g., psychopathy, spitefulness, moral disengagement) endorses a common framework for socially aversive traits over and beyond the dark triad. Despite the rapidly growing research on socially aversive traits, there is a lack of studies addressing age-associated differences in these traits. In the present study ( N = 12,501), we investigated the structure of the D Factor of Personality across age and gender using local structural equation modeling, thereby expressing the model parameters as a quasi-continuous, nonparametric function of age. Specifically, we evaluated loadings, reliabilities, factor (co-)variances, and means across 35 locally weighted age groups (from 20 to 54 years), separately for females and males. Results indicated that measurement models were highly stable, thereby supporting the conceptualization of the D factor independent of age and gender. Men exhibited uniformly higher latent means than females and all latent means decreased with increasing age. Overall, D and its themes were invariant across age and gender. Therefore, future studies can meaningfully pursue causes of mean differences across age and between genders.

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Climbing the corporate ladder and within-person changes in narcissism: Reciprocal relationships over two decades

Cited by 26 publications

References 89 publications

Manager narcissism and employee silence: A socio‐analytic theory perspective

Manager narcissism and employee silence: A socio‐analytic theory perspective

Narcissism and Leadership in Children

Age and gender differences in socially aversive (“dark”) personality traits

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