Narcissists Fail to Adapt to the Higher Stakes of Accountability
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Maladaptive narcissists do not respond to accountability, no matter how severe
Narcissists can still be expected to act incorrigibly even when facing jail time, court hearings, or any other accountability feature. They do not adapt their behavior sufficiently and continue despite it if telling the truth would affect their desirability to those they are performing for.
āUnderstanding the Underestimation of Self-Report Weight: The Roles of Narcissism and Accountabilityā
This paper was a pre-print, meaning it was published before the full process of publication was complete.
Test of accuracy for weight and height
In the paper, individuals were asked to describe their weight and height.
Most people showed self-enhancement and self-protective features at first, whether they were a narcissist or not.
Honest inaccuracy
Individuals without self-enhancing or self-protective features were honestly inaccurate; many people didnāt know what their actual weight was and used a previous number with some changes according to how they felt they compared from back then. This was not the same as self-enhancing or being self-protective.
Narcissistic projection of malicious intent on honest inaccuracy
Interestingly, narcissists would assume that people in the above case were doing so maliciously or to deliberately obscure the facts. This is the narcissistic projection of the vulnerable weight or height wound onto the target, who does not have the same neuroses: https://www.reddit.com/r/zeronarcissists/comments/1acus33/the_mechanisms_of_narcissistic_projection/
Non-narcissist non-protective response to actual weight
When they were given their real number, they adapted and gave their real weight now that they knew it.
Most people show self-enhancing and self-protective features unless held accountable. However, when held accountable they become more honest and accurate.
Self-enhancing and self-protective non-narcissists when made aware that they would be held accountable for wrong numbers clearly showed adjustment that demonstrated that they either a) could have been more precise in their last estimate, and had decided not to be or b) had deliberately given a wrong number because they didnāt think they would be checked on it. When they were found to be checked on it, the average person adjusted to being accountable and told a more accurate number.
Socially desirable responding
This can be more or less chalked up to what is called āsocially desirableā responding and is often found in social science studies; where people will give information that is less than accurate to seem more socially desirable, unless checked on it, skewing results of studies.
Narcissists do not become more honest and accurate when held accountable.
Narcissists however continued in self-enhancement and self-protective features even when held accountable and even when told their real weight. They therefore failed completely to adapt to the facts of the situation if it was an ego threat. This is truly dangerous in a leader or administrator, and in an individual, but we cannot try to superimpose adherence to truth on an individual in the same way we can with checking bodies in a leader or administrator.
Grandiose narcissists were deliberately inaccurate to confirm their grandiose self-view
Narcissists were deliberately inaccurate in reporting their height and weight to confirm their grandiose self-view. Faced with information that they were shorter or heavier than they were, they continued to provide the original information.
Inability to adapt to facts and evidence is called maladaptive narcissism; it is not able to adapt
This type of narcissism is called maladaptive narcissism because it fails to adapt effectively and in time to processes of accountability, and is dangerous to have in a leader and administrator for that reason as accountability tests are just as accurate as they are and will detect this.
Maladaptive narcissism is a self-protective antagonistic defense (it is antagonistic insofar as not becoming more truthful when a communal accountability institutions meets them is specifically against the communal interest, and therefore antisocial. They are also aware of this antisocial meaning in the denial of truth even faced with accountability. See; duping delight)
āMaladaptive narcissism is associated with low communal orientation and defensive, antagonistic self-protection. Accordingly, the present findings imply that weight underestimation may reflect defensive self-protection (i.e., avoiding negative weight-related perceptions) more than self-enhancement (i.e., seeking perceptions of oneself as more desirable). Aka, narcissists are more afraid of being viewed negatively than they want to be viewed positively.
Narcissists do not respond to or deliberately violate calls for accuracy depending on their intellectual development
āThe present findings also support evidence that narcissistic individuals are unlikely to respond to calls for accuracy over self-enhancement when it comes to their physical appearance as they are more likely to base their self-worth on their looks.ā
Given the statistical probability of a narcissist in a sample pool, researchers have extra costs in testing for narcissists and removing their nonfactual contributions. Narcissists are costly across the board.
Therefore, factoring in the likelihood of encountering the maladaptive narcissist in large bodies of people should be a factor for the researcher to consider. āSuch reports may be biased by self-protective concerns, and that increased accountability does not translate into increased accuracy for all participants.ā
These costs are getting higher as we ignore the scientific evidence on narcissism; there are more and more narcissists in the present day than before.
These individuals are more likely to be encountered more often in the present day due to an increasing number of narcissists and narcissistic tendencies due to the ongoing normalizing/apologism of narcissists.
We can extrapolate the features of this research and note that tribunals, jail time, being in front of a judge will have no effect on the narcissist who will deliberately evade, minimize or even dupe to avoid losing the desirability they perceive themselves to have with those who provide them narcissistic supply.
Accountability does not work with narcissists. Only logical deduction by a non-projecting non-narcissist can prove their criminality (narcissists opposed in some way can be likely to just project their own guilt; this is still not the same as discovery of facts)
. They can be counted on to deny it every time, no matter how strong the evidence. Projecting normal adaptation to accountability on a narcissist simply because without the projection the reality of the narcissistās ability to lie and deceive under oath is too disturbing is grossly incompetent.
Tl;dr
āMoreover, the recent increase in narcissistic tendencies in society and our finding that accountability does not improve self-report estimates for individuals who are high in maladaptive narcissism, highlights the need to take this trait into consideration when using self-report data in health research in the future.ā
Practical note
Why ānarcissism repellentsā are so effective! Narcissists would never pragmatically lower their self-enhancement even if it meant losing a parasitic audience. Thus these types of acts are very good at identifying and removing narcissists.