My way or the highway: Narcissism and dysfunctional team conflict processes

03 Sep, 2025

My way or the highway: Narcissism and dysfunctional team conflict processes Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/13684302211001944

Pasteable Citation: Lynch, J., McGregor, A., & Benson, A. J. (2022). My way or the highway: Narcissism and dysfunctional team conflict processes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 25(4), 1157-1171.

Narcissistic individuals engage in more competitive as opposed to cooperative conflict and maintain their inflated self-views through self-aggrandizing and other-derogating.

Individuals higher in grandiose narcissism strive to create and maintain their inflated self-views through self-aggrandizing and other-derogating behaviors. Drawing from the dual-process model of narcissistic admiration and rivalry, we proposed that individuals higher in narcissism may contribute to more competitive and less cooperative conflict processes.

Grandiose narcissism has a high impact on group functioning.

One personality trait that may influence group functioning is grandiose narcissism (Sedikides & Campbell, 2017).

Higher levels of narcissism were hypothesized to create more conflict processes that characterized more competition rather than cooperation, even in their own ingroup (dysfunction)

Despite widespread recognition of the social consequences of narcissism, such as ethically questionable decision making (e.g., Campbell & Campbell, 2009; Sedikides & Campbell, 2017), the implications of narcissism for team functioning are not well understood. In the current study, we apply the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept (NARC; Back et al., 2013), a dual-process model of narcissism, to investigate how teams with higher levels of narcissism might suffer from conflict processes characterized by competition rather than cooperation

Competitive high conflict can be characterized by an isolated nose to the grindstone from a revenge perspective, to prove others wrong. In contrast, cooperation focuses on resolving disagreements in a communal manner and prioritizing collective interests. This is considered functional, while the former is considered dysfunctional.

Competitive conflict processes preserve individuality and focus on individual task completion by members striving to advance their own interests and prove others wrong. In contrast, cooperative conflict processes focus on resolving disagreements in a communal manner and prioritize collective interests. Meta-analytic findings demonstrate that competitive conflict processes are often harmful to team functioning, whereas cooperative conflict processes are positively associated with team member satisfaction and team performance outcomes (DeChurch et al., 2013).

Narcissists believe they are superior, don’t take advice thinking they don’t need it, prioritize themselves over their collective no matter the peril to themselves and the collective (dysfunctional), and are less likely to change the goals from theirs to the group’s.

Narcissists believe they are superior (Brummelman et al., 2016), dismiss advice from others (Kausel et al., 2015), prioritize self-interests over collective interests (Campbell et al., 2005), and are less likely to support the goals suggested by other team members (Giambatista & Hoover, 2018). Given that narcissists intensely pursue status and are vigilant to status-relevant cues (Grapsas et al., 2020)

Narcissists are less likely to recognize the validity of another perspective because they view it as a threat to the dominant top dog position, instead of what it actually is, healthily adapting to relevant and accurate feedback. Basically, the top dog doesn’t need any different perspectives, even if it is literal necessary feedback that comes from being embedded in any system ongoing in time and space in the wider social world.

narcissistic team members may be less likely to accede to others’ viewpoints and perspectives in team conflict situations to avoid diminishing their social standing.

Narcissists in the beginning are fine leaders, but quickly lead to collapse. In the beginning they can create excitement by being more daring, bold and risky than the average person. However, over time they are a source of irritation and high conflict.

Furthermore, narcissists believe they are effective leaders and are perceived to be effective in such roles, at least during the early stages of social interaction (Brunell et al., 2008; Nevicka et al., 2011). As described within the energy clash model (Sedikides & Campbell, 2017), although narcissists can be a source of irritation and conflict due to their selfinterested and exploitative tendencies, narcissistic individuals also have the ability to create excitement and change due to their bold and risky strategies (Sedikides & Campbell, 2017). Overall, the social consequences of narcissism are complex, varying based on the length of acquaintance and familiarity as well as on the context.

When a narcissist is in the rivalry instantiation, they antagonistically self-protect, get aggressive, devalue others and strive for supremacy (ironically, in the case of negging, the devaluation can be an example of someone who usually would want to come off supportive and attractive actually seeing the person they’re interested in as a rival…ironically for their own attention in the narcissistic case. AKA, paying attention to someone else means the narcissist is not paying the attention to themselves they usually pay to themselves, which feels wrong to them and ironically triggers a rivalry with the person getting their attention for their own attention...to themselves)

The narcissistic rivalry pathway is characterized by antagonistic self-protection, which involves aggression, devaluation of others, and supremacy striving (Back et al., 2013). Narcissistic rivalry is associated with more fragile self-views (Geukes et al., 2017), negative views of others (Back et al., 2013), and a desire to disrupt group membership in response to group failure (Benson et al., 2019).

Narcissists in rivalry tend to be disliked for this, experiencing rejection, criticism, and distrust. If they want to not experience these painful emotions so much they need to actively disengage the rivalry position when it is sincerely not appropriate

Notably, individuals higher in narcissistic rivalry tend to experience more negative social outcomes (e.g., rejection, criticism, distrust) due to their arrogant and aggressive interpersonal behaviors (Back et al., 2013; Leckelt et al., 2015). Individuals higher in narcissistic rivalry may also be more likely to aggressively advance their own ideas and derogate others in group discussions marred by disagreement. As such, we expect that teams with members higher in narcissistic rivalry will experience more competitive conflict processes and less cooperative conflict processes.

Narcissists have a soothing effect on people who need dominant assurance. Narcissistic admiration is associated with more positive and stable self-views and when in this state they tend to view in-group members more positively.

Narcissistic admiration is characterized by assertive self-enhancement, which includes grandiose fantasies, striving to be unique, and charm. Unlike the rivalry dimension of narcissism, individuals higher in narcissistic admiration tend to be liked and afforded high status due to their selfassured and dominant behavior (Leckelt et al., 2015). Narcissistic admiration is associated with more positive and stable self-views (Geukes et al., 2017) and a tendency to view ingroup members more positively (Benson et al., 2019)

Teammates higher in narcissistic admiration bring clarity to group discussions by willing to be an anchoring leader in what might otherwise be a weak group dynamics negotiation, and can facilitate more beneficial team conflict processes. However, the self-orientation may hinder collaborative and open discussions

One possibility is that teammates higher in narcissistic admiration will positively assert themselves and bring clarity to group discussions, which might facilitate more beneficial team conflict processes. Another possibility, however, is that the highly agentic and self-interested orientation of such individuals might hinder collaborative and open discussions among group members (Nevicka et al., 2011).

The NARQ was used, including terms like “I react annoyed if another person steals the show from me” only found on primarily narcissistic individuals.

Narcissism. Participants completed the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ; Back et al., 2013), which assesses narcissistic admiration (nine items; α = .77; e.g., “Being a very special person gives me a lot of strength”) and narcissistic rivalry (nine items; α = .76; e.g., “I react annoyed if another person steals the show from me”). Participants indicated the degree to which they agreed with the 18 statements, using a 6-point Likert-type scale (1 = not at all agree, 6 = agree completely).

(I react annoyed if another person steals the show from me / I deserve to be seen as a great personality / I want my rivals to fail / Being a very special person gives me a lot of strength / I manage to be the center of attention with my outstanding contributions / Most people are somehow losers)

Conflict Management Processes Questionnaire (Barker et al., 1988) was used to identify conflict processes, identifying competitive conflict with such statements as “Individual team members demand that I agree with their position” where someone else might see someone simply sharing their position, not demanding you agree with it. It was tinged with an adversarial predisposition that didn’t reflect reality in many cases.

Participants completed the Conflict Management Processes Questionnaire (Barker et al., 1988), which assesses perceptions of conflict processes (i.e., conflict management style) within groups. The 14-item version including the subscales for competitive conflict processes (T2: α = .87; T3: α = .94; “Individual team members demand that I agree to their position”) and cooperative conflict processes (T2: α = .88; T3: α = .92; “Individual team members seek a solution that will be good for all of us”) was modified using a group referent shift. (Individual team members stick to their position to get others to compromise / Individual team members demand that I agree to their position / Individual team members want others to make concessions, but do not want to make concessions themselves /Individual team members treat issues in conflict as a win-lose contest / Individual team members overstate their needs and position to get their way /Individual team members make it costly for me to hold my view/ Individual team members force functional groups to accept schedules and budgets with which they are not comfortable)

Lower response rates due to a high conflict, more hostile and adversarial environment are a catch-22 of less data due to less communication due to excess adversariality. Sometimes it was so bad that the researchers could only get two to complete the survey. Low response rates may be a sign of workers being adapted to an extremely hostile environment due to excessive adversality in narcissistic leadership.

Specific to the team conflict scores, O’Neill et al. (2018) argued that lower response rates might reflect group dysfunction and thus omitting teams with missing members might systematically bias the results. Following this reasoning, rather than only including teams that provided full response sets from all members, we retained teams that had at least two members that completed the surveys.

Specifically, teams with higher mean scores of narcissistic rivalry experienced lower levels of cooperative conflict and higher levels of competitive conflict as they approached their end-of-term design project deadline.

Our findings suggest that narcissistic rivalry is a key variable for understanding how teams navigate and work through disagreements. Specifically, teams with higher mean scores of narcissistic rivalry experienced lower levels of cooperative conflict and higher levels of competitive conflict as they approached their end-of-term design project deadline. These results only partially support H1 and H2 because we initially predicted that team maximum scores of narcissism would account for variance in both types of team conflict processes, and we only observed support for these associations at the final time point. Nonetheless, the positive linkages between team mean scores of narcissistic rivalry and both forms of team conflict processes remained significant at the final time point when controlling for narcissistic admiration, the Big Five personality factors, and team gender composition. Furthermore, our exploratory analyses revealed that narcissistic rivalry may undermine team satisfaction levels through its negative relation with cooperative conflict processes.

Narcissistic rivalry leads the narcissists to present with a combination of arrogance and aggression towards the rival, which leads to more negative peer evaluations (aggressive-arrogance can be seriously disturbing to witness in its most hateful instantiations)

Indeed, researchers have found that, over time, narcissistic rivalry accounts for increasing displays of arrogant-aggressive interpersonal behaviors and more negative peer evaluations (Leckelt et al., 2015). Second, the final measurement period was shortly before the deadline for the project—a time frame in which teams tend to upregulate their engagement in group processes (Larson et al., 2020). As such, the antagonistic interpersonal style that is characteristic of narcissistic rivalry may have become more apparent as teammate interactions increased in both frequency and intensity with the approaching project deadline

The narcissist’s strong desire for individual status coupled with low regard for communion were expected to make their team less productive. However narcissistic admiration and cooperative team processes were found. Narcissistic admiration refers to the narcissist’s attempts to self-promote and self-enhance in the positive. When in this instantiation, they were more cooperative. When they were trying to prevent an ongoing sense of increasing social failure, they were more adversarial. In the adversarial position, the narcissist considers themselves self-defending against social failure. Ironically, this will deepen their social failure. Given the limits of their personality disorder, staying in the self-promotion and self-enhancing position was the more functional of the two as it led to more overall cooperation.

We theorized that the strong desire for status coupled with low regard for communion that are germane to narcissistic admiration would lead to less productive team conflict processes (i.e., more competitive, less cooperative). Failing to support H3 and H4, we did not find support for the maximum score approach (or the mean score approach) to narcissistic admiration operationalization within teams. One exception was a positive association between narcissistic admiration and cooperative team conflict processes at the second time point. However, this linkage was only significant when controlling for narcissistic rivalry, which may reflect statistical suppression

If the narcissist feels like they are in a subordinate role, no matter how inaccurate that may be, they may get problematic as they desire status and do not like to feel themselves in such roles (again, reflecting not wanting the show stolen from them and other factors found on the NARQ questionnaire)

That said, narcissists who are forced to occupy a subordinate role may also be problematic due to their strong desire for status and unwillingness to embrace such roles (Benson et al., 2016)

Narcissists may be directly the source of conflict, but also the cultures of ego insecurity, adversity, and self-enhancement can create cultures maladapted to their traits that then go on themselves to create more conflict.

This would open up a range of analytical opportunities, such as examining whether narcissistic individuals are the source of conflicts, or if their presence catalyzes conflict between other dyads within the group

Conflict served many purposes for narcissists but specifically undermining others’ status when they feel the show is stolen from them or they feel an inappropriate narcissistic rivalry is one of the main motives.

Narcissistic team members may be prone to using conflict processes to match their grandiose selfview maintenance strategy (e.g., advancing their own self-interests, maximizing ingroup status, and/ or undermining others’ status) and dysfunctional team conflict processes