Can communal work activities reduce supervisors’ state grandiose narcissism? A 10-day experience sampling study

ABSTRACT

Narcissism is heavily investigated in psychology, including work and organizational psychology. Despite research underscoring that narcissism has a meaningful state component, there is currently no research available on within-person fluctuations in narcissism at work. The current study explores the role of particular activities that can either enhance or reduce narcissism states while at work. Specifically, the effects of agentic (i.e., directing and achieving) and communal (i.e., relating and coaching) work activities on state narcissism are examined in a sample of 121 supervisors. We assessed the work activities and supervisors’ state of narcissism two times a day over a 10-day period. Concurrent and lagged associations were examined using Dynamic Structural Equation Modelling (DSEM). The results first indicated a substantial amount of momentous fluctuation in narcissism, with up to 12% of the variability in supervisors’ narcissism scores being situated at the within-person level. Further, two types of work activities (i.e., achieving and coaching) were found to have a positive (enhancing) effect on supervisors’ state narcissism. None of the work activities emerged as a factor reducing state narcissism in this study. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• narcissism
• within-person fluctuations
• work activities
• agency
• communion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Additional analyses using trait narcissism as a predictor for the random effects at the between level indicate that the between-person differences cannot be explained by trait narcissism (see Appendix B Table B1).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the FWO [3G000520].