Article: Wednesday, 20 June 2018
In Greek mythology, a hunter named Narcissus fell in love with himself when he saw his own image reflected in a pool of water. Sadly, self-obsessed narcissists are no myth in the modern workplace, revealing themselves in tendencies like taking credit for others’ hard work, name-dropping and hogging the centre of attention. Perhaps even more troubling, narcissists also seem to enjoy positions of power and privilege. Until now, it was assumed narcissists tended to clinch powerful positions for themselves. However, research by Dr Nicole Mead and researcher Anika Stuppy suggests that power itself may create narcissists.
Mead, Stuppy and their fellow researchers found that endowing people with social power inflates the socially-toxic component of narcissism called exploitation and entitlement. “Narcissists can feel a sense of entitlement, they expect and demand respect from others as well as special privileges,” says Dr Mead. “They are willing to exploit others to get what they want.” Give them power and those people can turn into oppressors and bullies, who don’t hesitate to take what they want. Anika Stuppy says: “We’ve all seen examples of top level managers who have abused their position to enrich themselves”. “While power doesn’t turn everyone into a destructive tyrant, it has pernicious effects when it gets into the hands of those who want it most,” says Mead.
Mead and Stuppy delved into the relationship between power and narcissism to help explain the socially toxic behaviours of powerful people, which they saw as resembling narcissistic behaviour. Mead says: “Although the corrupting nature of power has been noted for centuries, the way it changes how people see themselves in relation to others remained an enigma. We thought narcissistic self-views may be a missing piece of the puzzle for understanding how power corrupts.”
Narcissists can feel a sense of entitlement, they expect and demand respect from others as well as special privileges.
To test their theory that social power inflates narcissism among people with high testosterone, Mead and Stuppy recruited 206 men and women. In the Erasmus Behavioural Lab they took saliva samples from each participant to establish testosterone levels and told them they were joining in a team dynamics study. Each person was asked to complete tasks framed as measures of leadership abilities. All participants were told they achieved the best leadership score, but only half of participants were told they would be “boss” of a group task. This meant they could control their subordinates and the rewards associated with the group task. The other half were told they had equal control over the same task.
Narcissism was assessed using the most commonly used measure of narcissism, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Corruption was measured with a scale that taps into people’s willingness to misuse their power. Because men have higher testosterone levels than women, the researchers standardised testosterone levels within each gender. This means the researchers were able to examine how people react to power when they have relatively high or low testosterone levels for their gender.
The study shows that men and women with low baseline testosterone for their gender don’t become narcissists when put in a position of power. However, those who have high testosterone levels for their gender show an increase in the exploitative-entitlement component of narcissism when bestowed with power. Increased narcissism in turn explained their enhanced willingness to misuse their power.
“This research is some of the first to look at factors that fuel the rise of narcissism and to pinpoint the change in self-views that can explain the corrupting influence of power,” says Dr Mead. “Moreover, the work shows that the destructive effects of power were not due to narcissistic feelings of superiority but rather narcissistic feelings that one is special and should be treated accordingly. Feelings of exploitation and entitlement may help those who crave power to retain a power gap between themselves and others.”
Feelings of exploitation and entitlement may help those who crave power to retain a power gap between themselves and others.
Organisations would do well to be careful when filling leadership vacancies. Stuppy says: “We recommend companies to fill leadership positions not with people who display high-testosterone behaviours: those who walk around with an air of domination, boss secretaries around, or would steal your chair in a meeting. It could be that these are the people who will unleash their narcissist when you give them power. Instead we encourage companies to look for actual signs of competence, talent and skill”.
York University
Tilburg University
Read the paper by Nicole L. Mead, Roy F. Baumeister, Anika Stuppy and Kathleen D. Vohs here: Power Increases the Socially Toxic Component of Narcissism Among Individuals with High Baseline Testosterone
This article is based on an article by Linda McSweeny on the Pursuit platform of the University of Melbourne. Dr Nicole Mead is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne. Anika Stuppy is a PhD candidate at RSM.
