Is it Egotistical if it is True?

Recent research is causing psychologists to rethink grandiose narcissism.

“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” Nietzsche

Is this quote egotistical? Why or why not? Let’s really think this through.

I am aware that social etiquette generally decries the arrogant in favor of the humble. But we also don’t like liars; we like people who tell the truth about themselves. So what if it’s true that you have high ambitions— should you hide them? So what if you are proud of your successes— should you keep that pride to yourself?

A new study is causing psychologists to reconsider the whole notion of “grandiose narcissism”. Traditionally, psychologists have identified three major types of narcissism:

• agentic/grandiose narcissism

• antagonistic/expoitatitve narcissism

• vulnerable/covert narcissism

I think we can all agree that there are obvious problems with being antagonistic and exploitative with everyone you meet or constantly secretly feeling “wronged” by the world and vindictive and shameful for your lack of successes in life. But let’s double click for a moment on agentic/grandiose narcissism and look at some of the items that are used to measure to form of narcissism in the general population (at a non-clinical level):

• I am great.

• I will someday be famous.

• I enjoy my successes very much.

• Being a very special person gives me a lot of strength.

• Most of the time I am able to draw people’s attention to myself in conversations.

• I manage to be the center of attention with my outstanding contributions.

• Mostly, I am very adept at dealing with other people.

• I am a born leader.

• People always seem to recognize my authority.

• I have a strong will to power.

On the surface, those who self-report a very strong agreement with these items may be seen as arrogant. But that’s out of context. What if you knew that the person was Michael Jordan responding to this quiz? What if you knew that the person was Oprah? Or Steve Jobs? How would you expect these folks to respond— to lie? To falsely say they aren’t great or famous or usually the center of attention? Would it be considered humble for an obviously successful leader to say they aren’t very successful and that they aren’t very good at dealing with other people? Or would it be an obvious case of false humility? What’s more, don’t we want to instill in young people the value of dreaming big? Of having high ambitions, and of recognizing their potential?

Consider a study by Marius Leckelt and colleagues using a representative sample of the entire German population. While most psychologists have traditionally treated grandiose narcissism as a single construct, the researchers separated out the agentic and antagonistic aspects of narcissism and followed a large sample of people over time. While agentic narcissism was related to friendship, happiness, self-esteem, employment, leadership, and income, antagonistic narcissism was negatively related to intrapsychic adjustment. Over time, agentic aspects were positively associated with holding a leadership position while the antagonistic aspects were related to lower self-esteem and being unemployed.

In a more recent and surprising study, Victoria Pringle and her colleagues “found no support for the notion that people higher in narcissism think they make better impressions than they really do.” That’s right, you read that right! In one of the first ever actual tests of whether narcissists think they make a better impression than they really do, they found that while those scoring higher in narcissistic antagonism/rivalry assumed others saw them negatively (and were viewed negatively), people higher in the agentic/grandiose narcissism facets tended to believe they were seen positively for their agentic attributes (e.g., assertiveness, high status, etc.) and their self-perceptions were not systematically biased. In other words, grandiose narcissists did have grandiose self-views, but the researchers found no evidence of self-enhancement in these traits!

So maybe we need to rethink the whole notion of grandiose narcissism. Outside of a clinical context (we're aren’t talking about malignant narcissism here) and in the general population, perhaps people who score high in grandiose narcissism surveys may actually be truly awesome leaders who are just stating the facts of their life. Maybe we need to get rid of the label “narcissism” for these folks just because we personally may feel threatened by them or jealous of their successes. Maybe it’s everyone else who are the narcissists and haters are just gonna hate!

Not so fast. Maybe there’s more to this story.

                                           Grandiose Narcissism Over Time

If you look at the data of Pringle and her colleagues in more detail you will notice that the patterns they found were especially apparent in first impressions and became less apparent over time as acquaintanceship increased from “first impression” to “acquainted” to “close-other contexts.”

This is consistent with prior work showing that people scoring higher in grandiose narcissism do in fact make a better impression at first acquaintance due to four cues that make up their “charismatic air”:

• Attractiveness (flashy, neat attire)

• Competence (self-assured behavior)

• Interpersonal warmth (charming glances at strangers)

• Humor (witty verbal expressions)

However, over time more of their competitive and exploitative nature is revealed, causing them to lose popularity over time. Indeed, Marius Leckelt and colleagues found in a 2015 paper that when people were asked to actually collaborate together on a team project, agentic/grandiose narcissism explained the initial popularity, while a decrease in agentic/grandiose narcissism and an increase in narcissistic antagonism/rivalry over time was responsible for the decline in popularity. By the end of a three week period and several social interactions, narcissists were regarded as untrustworthy by their peers. As Pringle and colleagues put it, “our results suggest that at least in relatively naturalistic, neutral settings, narcissists are not systematically biased about the impressions they think they make.” Let’s be honest: Most settings aren’t neutral and over time require at least some sort of cooperation by both parties.

But still… I’m looking at the items on the agentic/grandiose scale (see above) and thinking that maybe we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. All of the items aren’t necessarily bad, especially in the context of other positive traits. Don’t we want people who have high self-belief and confidence in their ability to be a leader and to captivate others? So I decided to look into the literature on humility to help me come up with a better way of thinking about all of this.

                                         Grandiose Narcissism vs. Humility

In a completely separate literature, psychologists Aaron Weidman and colleagues did a comprehensive review of studies on humility and found that there are actually two different forms of humility:

• Appreciative humility: Involving feelings of appreciation for others and oneself. Typically follows personal successes, involves actions meant to celebrate others, and is linked to authentic pride and being generally considered a prestigious and genuinely competent individual within their field.

• Self-abasing humility: Feelings of self-abasement. Typically follows personal failures, involves negative self-evaluations and actions oriented toward hiding from others’ evaluations, and is linked to pervasive feelings of shame, low self-esteem, and submissiveness.

I think we can all agree that appreciative humility sounds pretty awesome and self-abasing humility is doing no one any favors. Appreciative humility is associated with a feeling of groundedness and not feeling the need to prove anything to anyone. It includes items such:

• “at peace”

• “aware of finitude”

• “aware of one’s shortcomings and limitations”

• “aware of what you don’t know, and not hiding it”

• “being happy to be part of a conversation, not its center”

• “having nothing to pretend”

• “not given to feelings of superiority”

• “not given to overstamtent of one’s own achievements”

• “not trying to seem better than others”

• “strong sense of self-esteem”

• “acknowledging that you are one among many”

• “allowing that others are better at certain things”

• “understanding one’s limitations”

Wow, now we can really see the contrast between these items and the items on the agentic/grandiose narcissism scale! The agentic/grandiose narcissism items are all about bragging about how awesome one is regardless of actual successes and are all exclusively self-focused whereas these items are more balanced, acknowledging one’s strengths but also acknowledging one’s limitations.

It’s also striking to me that appreciative humility is linked to an authentic pride for one’s genuine accomplishments whereas grandiose narcissism is linked to having hubristic pride and a path to social status paved with dominance. Sure, grandiose narcissism can make it more likely you will actually become a leader, but is that really the kind of leader we want?

I still don’t want to throw the grandiose baby out with the bathwater though. As a kid I was in special education for a hearing disability and without dreaming big and having self-belief there is no way I would have pushed myself to prove everyone else wrong about my capabilities. While that underdog motivation served me in my youth, I really do believe the thing that has gotten me through my adult career is having a real awareness of my own limitations and shining a spotlight on the amazing people around me. There’s no reason why we can’t lift each other up and ourselves at the same time.

At the end of the day, I think it’s possible to have high ambitions, to even want to be famous and successful, and also have appreciative humility. Perhaps psychologists can do a better job mixing and matching items from the grandiose narcissism scale with the appreciative humility scale to get at some hybrid trait that is not narcissism but which is really adaptive for reaching one’s goals in a prosocial and less dominant way. Maybe we can call it something like “ambitious humility” or “prosocial ambition”.

In the meantime, while psychologists figure this out, I encourage you all to dream big, not just for you but for what you can do for others as well.