Look how smart I am!: Only narcissistic admiration is associated with inflated reports of intelligence

Abstract Individuals with high grandiose narcissism tend to think they are extraordinarily intelligent, and these views determine their psychological well-being. In the current research, we investigated how two aspects of grandiose narcissism—admiration and rivalry—are associated with objective intelligence, subjective intelligence, and intelligence-related beliefs. We expected that only narcissistic admiration, which reflects the agentic aspect of grandiose narcissism, would be associated with subjective intelligence as the latter is regarded as a prototypical agentic attribute. In Study 1 (N = 311) narcissism (i.e., admiration and rivalry) was uncorrelated with objective intelligence but admiration was related to inflated self-reported intelligence as well as global life satisfaction and domain-specific intelligence satisfaction. Furthermore, intelligence-related beliefs mediated the link between admiration and life satisfaction. In Study 2 (N = 211), consistent with the predictions, people with high admiration perceived intelligence as an important way to gain popularity. By contrast, individuals scoring high on rivalry perceived intelligence as a factor influencing social status and having low importance in interpersonal relations. Our findings suggest that intelligence is a key characteristic only for those narcissists who score high on the admiration dimension, but not the rivalry dimension

Look how smart I am! : only narcissistic admiration is associated with inflated reports of intelligence

Individuals with high grandiose narcissism tend to think they are extraordinarily intelligent, and these views determine their psychological well-being. In the current research, we investigated how two aspects of grandiose narcissism—admiration and rivalry—are associated with objective intelligence, subjective intelligence, and intelligence-related beliefs. We expected that only narcissistic admiration, which reflects the agentic aspect of grandiose narcissism, would be associated with subjective intelligence as the latter is regarded as a prototypical agentic attribute. In Study 1 (N = 311) narcissism (i.e., admiration and rivalry) was uncorrelated with objective intelligence but admiration was related to inflated self-reported intelligence as well as global life satisfaction and domain-specific intelligence satisfaction. Furthermore, intelligence-related beliefs mediated the link between admiration and life satisfaction. In Study 2 (N = 211), consistent with the predictions, people with high admiration perceived intelligence as an important way to gain popularity. By contrast, individuals scoring high on rivalry perceived intelligence as a factor influencing social status and having low importance in interpersonal relations. Our findings suggest that intelligence is a key characteristic only for those narcissists who score high on the admiration dimension, but not the rivalry dimension

Who complies with the restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19?: Personality and perceptions of the COVID-19 situation

In 2020, many countries around the world created and enforced heavy restrictions geared towards reducing the spread of the coronavirus (i.e., COVID-19). In this study (N = 263), we examined the role of personality traits (i.e., Big Five and Dark Triad) and individual differences in perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic situation (the situational eight: Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, Positivity, Negativity, Deception, and Sociality) in accounting for individual differences in compliance with the governmental restrictions in Poland. We found that the way people perceived the situation explained more variance in compliance than personality traits which is in accordance with the hypothesis that strong situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, leave less room for dispositional tendencies in predicting behaviors than situational cues. Moreover, people scoring low on agreeableness and high on aspects of the Dark Triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, psychopathy Factor 1, and narcissistic rivalry) were less likely to comply with the restrictions. Additionally, we replicated and extended what is known about the associations between personality and individual differences in the perception of situations when the latter were assessed in relation to a strong situation and the former were assessed with long and multidimensional measures

Testosterone and narcissism

Grandiose narcissism is defined as increased motivation for status and viewing oneself as entitled and superior to others. We hypothesized that these tendencies might be associated with basal levels of testosterone because testosterone is considered the most social hormone—driving dominance and the motivation to achieve social status. We distinguished between two facets of grandiose narcissism: agentic (i.e., the tendency to self-promotion in order to win others’ admiration and social influence) and antagonistic (i.e., a reactive strategy used to restore threatened status). In 283 adult men, we examined the association between these facets of narcissism and blood-tested and selfreported testosterone levels. Agentic narcissism—the default narcissistic strategy—was positively associated with both testosterone indicators. Moreover, self-reported and objectively measured testosterone were positively correlated. These findings extend previous work by showing that the facets of narcissism have distinct hormonal underpinnings