Honestly Arrogant or Simply Misunderstood? Narcissists' Awareness of their Narcissism

Abstract

Narcissists describe themselves as narcissistic (e.g., arrogant). Do they have self-insight, or do they simply misunderstand the behavioral manifestations or consequences of narcissism? With two samples (undergraduates N = 86, 65% female, M _age = 20; MTurk N = 234, 62% female, M _age = 35), the current paper investigates whether narcissism is associated with genuine self-insight. Findings suggest that individuals higher in narcissism: (a) agree with close others (informant N = 217) that they behave in explicitly narcissistic ways (e.g., brag); (b) view narcissism as an individually desirable trait but not necessarily as a socially desirable trait; and (c) strive to be more narcissistic. Thus, it appears that narcissists truly grasp the behavioral and social significance of their narcissism.

Keywords:

• Interpersonal perception
• Narcissism
• Personality
• Self-knowledge

Notes

However, recent work suggests that the most commonly used social-personality measure of narcissism, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Terry, 1988), measures characteristics that are fairly similar to those assessed by clinical measures of NPD (Miller, Gaughan, Pryor, Kamen, & Campbell, 2009).

Samples sizes vary across results due to listwise deletion (i.e., a small number of participants did not complete all measures or items).

Data from both samples reflect subsets of data from larger studies. Please contact the author for details about these studies.

There were no reliable gender differences in perceptions of narcissistic traits, behavior, or ratings of the desirability of narcissism. Thus, results were not reported separately for males and females.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erika N. Carlson

This research was funded by the NSF (grant #BCS-1125553 to Simine Vazire). I would like to thank Simine Vazire for reading earlier drafts of this manuscript as well as Kathryn Bollich, Katrina Jongman-Sereno, Jordan Livingston, and Brittany Solomon for their insightful comments.