The Greek myth of Narcissus tells the story of a man so vain
and proud that he fell in love with his own image. In the field
of psychology, Freud (1914/1991) used the term narcissism to
describe the relationship between libido and the ego. Freud
considered narcissism to result from a perturbed childhood
transition from subject-directed to other-directed libido, and
was manifested in tendencies to prefer fantasy to reality. Since
Freud’s libidinal-based treatment of the concept, psychologists
considered narcissism to lie within the domain of clinical psychology,
though in a manner somewhat different from Freud’s
treatment. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM–IV; American Psychiatric Association,
2000), narcissism is, broadly, a grandiose sense of selfimportance.
According to the DSM–IV, narcissists are preoccupied
with fantasies of unlimited success, believe they are
special and unique, require excessive admiration, have a sense
of entitlement, are interpersonally exploitive, lack empathy, and are arrogant and haughty. Within the realm of normal psychology,
narcissism came under serious study in the late 1970s and
has since intensified. Some writers have argued that society as
a whole has become more narcissistic (Lasch, 1979), while
others have argued that individuals differ in their narcissist
tendencies and such differences could be measured in the normal
population (Raskin & Hall, 1981).
In personality/social psychology, research has focused on topics
such as whether narcissism predicts aggression (e.g., Bushman,
Bonacci, van Dijk, & Baumeister, 2003), how narcissists view and
are viewed by others (e.g., Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, &
McDowell, 2003), and the role of narcissism in self-enhancement
(Wallace & Baumeister, 2002) and in interpersonal relationships
(e.g., Campbell, Foster, & Finkel, 2002). Researchers have distinguished
narcissism from related concepts such as extraversion,
hostility, and self-esteem. Of these, perhaps most focal is selfesteem.
Research has indicated that narcissism is positively but
moderately related to self-esteem, with the correlation varying by
self-esteem measures ( r¯.35 across measures; Brown & Zeigler-
Hill, 2004). Campbell, Rudich, and Sedikides (2002) conclude,
“Narcissism does not appear simply to reflect exceptionally high
self-esteem” (p. 365).
Numerous studies have sought to develop or validate measures
of narcissism. Of the extant measures, the most frequently used is
the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1981).
Emmons (1984) investigated the construct validity of the NPI and
found four factors, which he labeled: (1) Exploitiveness/Entitlement
(the belief that one is adept at manipulating people, and also
a sense of entitlement to do so); (2) Leadership/Authority (the
belief that one possesses an extraordinary ability to influence
others, and the preference for leadership and authority roles in
general); (3) Superiority/Arrogance (the belief that one is just
“better” than others and is a born leader); (4) Self-absorption/Selfadmiration
(an elevated sense of vanity and the belief that one is
special). Emmons (1987) and Watson and Biderman (1993) provided
additional construct validity evidence on a hierarchical representation of narcissism, whereby the four dimensions also indicate
a higher-order narcissism factor.
Given the intense interest in narcissism in personality/social
psychology, one might be quite surprised to find that narcissism
has been studied very little in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology.
In fact, of the 4,010 studies identified in the PsycINFO
database with narcissism in its keywords or abstract, there were no
studies published in the two flagship I-O journals, Journal of
Applied Psychology or Personnel Psychology. However, drawing
from the extant research in personality/social psychology, we
suggest that narcissism may play an important role in predicting
ratings of criteria that constitute a large portion of the job performance
domain. In fact, the relationship between narcissism and
ratings to performance criteria is likely to be relevant to I-O
scholars and practitioners for two fundamental reasons.
First, because narcissism broadly reflects strong self-admiration
and behavioral tendencies which may not be viewed positively by
others (Penney & Spector, 2002), it is possible that narcissism
influences self- and other perceptions differently, and insight into
this possibility may be important given that differences in perceptions
are the foundation for certain types of performance management
and development practices (Brett & Atwater, 2001). In
essence, narcissism may provide an explanation for differences in
the way we perceive our behavior relative to the way others see our
behavior, and this explanation is different than what is assumed by
scholars who may attribute differences to a number of factors
including the amount of information available to the rater regarding
the behavior being rated, a general self-serving bias, attribution
processes, or differences in understanding regarding the value of
certain behaviors to the organization (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995).
To date, however, there has been no research published (in any
journal in the PsycINFO database) that compares the influence of
narcissism with both self- and other ratings of job performance
criteria. Thus, one purpose of our research is to investigate relationships
between narcissism and self- and other ratings of job
performance criteria.
Second, we suggest that narcissism may have value as a predictor
of job performance criteria over and above other wellknown
personality traits. Although relationships between the Big
Five traits and job criteria such as leadership (Judge, Bono, Ilies,
& Gerhardt, 2002), contextual performance or citizenship behaviors
(Organ & Ryan, 1995), and job performance (Barrick &
Mount, 1991) are well established, narcissism is an aspect of
personality that is not reflected well in the Big Five (Paulhus &
Williams, 2002). Moreover, narcissism reflects a set of attitudes,
beliefs, and behavioral tendencies that likely impact each of these
organizational criteria in unique ways. To date, however, only a
few studies have even linked narcissism to these criteria. Exceptions
include Deluga (1997) who linked narcissism to the perceived
greatness of U.S. presidents and Penney and Spector (2002)
who linked narcissism to self-reported counterproductive behaviors.
As another example, Soyer, Rovenpor, and Kopelman (1999)
found a nonsignificant relationship between narcissism and selfreported
sales performance. Thus, a second purpose of our research
is to investigate the degree to which narcissism predicts job
performance criteria over and above the Big Five traits.
Before continuing, we note that our choice of performance
criteria was guided by research on multidimensional models of job
performance, which include leadership, workplace deviance, contextual
performance, and task performance (Borman & Brush,
1993; Campbell, 1990; Rotundo & Sackett, 2002). Traditionally,
leadership has constituted an aspect of performance in jobs that
included explicit accountability for the performance of a collective
(group, team, organization) or unit of work. However, the changing
nature of the workforce (e.g., increased diversity) and of the
nature of work itself (e.g., increased use of teams) have increased
the prevalence of leadership as an aspect of job performance
(Lord & Smith, 1999). Elements of workplace deviance (or counterproductive
performance), defined as voluntary behavior that
harms the well-being of the organization (Rotundo & Sackett,
2002), have been included as aspects of job performance by
several scholars (e.g., Murphy, 1989; Robinson & Bennett, 1995).
In fact, recent research suggests that managers weigh deviance
as much or more than performance of specific job duties when
completing overall performance evaluations (Rotundo & Sackett,
2002). Contextual performance includes those behaviors that contribute
to the organization by fostering a positive social and psychological
climate (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997). Examples of
contextual performance include assisting coworkers when they
need it, being courteous and respectful to peers, making constructive
suggestions, being a good sport, and putting forth extra effort
on the job. Finally, task performance includes those behaviors that
are generally recognized as part of the job and directly contribute
to the organization’s technical core (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997).
Although these four criteria do not exhaust the domain of job
performance criteria, they likely represent a large portion of this
domain across a broad set of jobs, and as we explain in the next
section, we expect each to be related to narcissism.