Narcissists more connected to reality than imagined, according to new UTM study

Narcissists may think they are out of this world, but it turns out their sense of how others view them is more down to earth than imagined. 

This is the key finding that University of Toronto Mississauga researcher Victoria Pringle uncovered in her new study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. 

“I’m drawn to the interpersonal perception aspect of narcissism — where people are accurate or biased in their sense of how they are seen by others, what the blind spots are,” says Pringle, a postdoctoral psychology researcher in UTM’s Self-Knowledge and Interpersonal Perceptions (SKIP) Lab and lead author of the study. 

“People can be quick to use the term narcissism as shorthand” when critiquing the behaviours of others, she notes, without necessarily knowing what it means.  

Narcissism is a personality disorder that involves having an excessive sense of self-importance, especially among those who are at the ‘grandiose’ end of the scale. 

It has been commonly thought a narcissist’s metaperceptions – how they think others perceive them — are such that they believe they make a much better impression on others than they actually do. This is known as the enhancement hypothesis, and its validity is what Pringle sought to test. 

Together with other researchers from UTM and the University of British Columbia, Pringle examined the findings of four data sets from experiments involving 1,537 undergraduate university students at U of T and McGill University. While none of the participants had diagnoses of clinical narcissism, Pringle says traits of the disorder fall on a spectrum, and the data revealed those who scored relatively higher on these traits.  

Participants in three of the four different study samples interacted with each other in pairs and in groups, providing their perceptions and metaperceptions of each other. Members of the fourth group, meanwhile, had a brief conversation with a new acquaintance, then gave them contact information for three people who know them well, and provided their metaperception of each of the three people. 

All participant surveys measured what are known as the ‘big five’ universal attributes of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Some measured additional attributes such as intelligence, likeability, attractiveness and social status. 

The researchers evaluated the participants’ metaperceptions in the context of the two distinct pathways that shape a narcissist’s high self-regard:  

• Admiration, characterized by a sense of feeling special, and using charm and self-promotion to achieve social approval and status;   

• Rivalry, which is characterized by believing others are inferior to you, resulting in antagonistic and derogatory interactions.  

One or both of these dimensions can be present in an individual with a narcissistic personality.