Positional preferences and narcissism: evidence from ‘money burning’ dictator games

ABSTRACT

We study the relationship between positional preferences (i.e., preferences concerning the relative rank or position in comparison to others) and narcissism. We use six ‘money burning’ mini-dictator games to measure positional preferences. Two dimensions of narcissism are distinguished: narcissistic admiration (self-enhancement through searching for being admired) and narcissistic rivalry (self-defence through an antagonistic orientation towards others). Controlling for other relevant individual characteristics such as the Big Five personality traits and gender, we find evidence that narcissistic admiration is a negative predictor and narcissistic rivalry a positive predictor of positional preferences. We further find exploratory evidence that studying business or economics as a major (versus minor) subject is associated with less positional preferences and that the relationships between narcissism and positional preferences are mediated by decision makers’ expectations with regard to other players’ choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Positional preferences
• positional concerns
• relative concerns
• narcissism

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• A12
• A13
• D63

Acknowledgments

We thank Anja Schwaiger for her support in the data entry process, and we thank Isabelle Fischer, María José Gallucci, Michael Paul Grosz, Heiko Holz, Ulrich Ludewig, and Julian Nüßle for their support in conducting the experiment.

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network [GSC1028].