The performance of narcissists rises and falls with perceived opportunity for glory.

By H. Wallace, Roy F. Baumeister. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002

646 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Narcissists consider themselves to be exceptional performers, but past research has found no consistent relationship between narcissism and performance. The present research tested the hypothesis that the relationship between subclinical narcissism and performance is moderated by a motivational factor: perceived self-enhancement opportunity. Four experiments were conducted, each using different manipulations of self-enhancement opportunity and different performance tasks. In each study, narcissists performed better when self-enhancement opportunity was high rather than low. In contrast, the performance of participants with low narcissism was relatively unaffected by self-enhancement opportunity. Other findings suggested that narcissists' self-enhancement motivation stems more from a desire to garner admiration than from a desire to self-evaluate. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6e419036b207e03a6637ecde79bdb780a44e7941

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Citations in the corpus

Should Entrepreneurially Oriented Firms Have Narcissistic CEOs? (2016, methodology): “Narcissistic CEOs are likely to consider these challenges attractive since they offer potential for self-enhancement (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002).”
Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism and Self-Esteem on Facebook (2010, positive): “Past research shows that narcissists, for example, are boastful and eager to talk about themselves, 14 gain esteem from public glory, 15 and are prevalent on reality television.”
Are normal narcissists psychologically healthy?: self-esteem matters. (2004, neutral): “The subclinical narcissistic personality is currently attracting keen theoretical and empirical interest (Rhodewalt & Morf, in press; Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, Elliot, & Gregg, 2002; Wallace & Baumeister, 2002 ).”
The costly pursuit of self-esteem. (2004, background): “One exception is found for narcissists, who perform better when they have the opportunity to selfenhance and therefore garner admiration from others (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002).”
Values and Creativity (2007, background): “(This may explain why narcissistic individuals, who highly value public recognition of competitive success, Kasser & Ryan, 1996, behave more creatively when anticipating public social comparison but not when anticipating private social comparison, Wallace & Baumeister, 2002.)”
The NPI-16 as a short measure of narcissism (2006, background): “Indeed, in their work on narcissism and self-enhancement, Wallace and Baumeister (2002) noted that total NPI scores were consistently more predictive than any of the subscale scores.”
Narcissism in organizational contexts (2010, background): “In a series of lab studies, for example, Wallace and Baumeister (2002) found that narcissism predicted elevated performance on public tasks, but diminished performance on private tasks.”
Individual differences in the social facilitation effect: A review and meta-analysis (2007, background): “One such trait is narcissism, which has been associated with improved performance, but only under certain social conditions (high potential for obtaining glory; Wallace & Baumeister, 2002).”
CEO Narcissism, Audience Engagement, and Organizational Adoption of Technological Discontinuities (2013, background): “Beyond Chatterjee and Hambrick’s (2007) conclusion that narcissistic CEOs have a general tendency to engage in grandiose strategic behaviors, we argue and find that there are some conditions under which narcissistic CEOs are especially likely to engage in bolder actions than their less narcissistic ”
Are Universities Creating Millennial Narcissistic Employees? An Empirical Examination of Narcissism in Business Students and Its Implications (2012, background): “…show enhanced performance on public evaluation tasks, focus on short-term victories in competitive tasks, are more extraverted, and demonstrate emergent leadership (Blair et al., 2008; Campbell et al., 2005; Emmons, 1984; Oltmanns et al., 2004; Paulhus, 1998; Wallace & Baumeister, 2002).”