Pass me the ball: narcissism in performance settings 4
Pass me the ball: narcissism in performance settings
Link: https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/files/17579987/2017_Pass_me_the_ball.pdf
Pasteable citation
Roberts, R., Woodman, T., & Sedikides, C. (2018). Pass me the ball: Narcissism in performance settings. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 11(1), 190-213.
Widespread messaging with collective verbiage also helped to reduce the aggravated effects of coaching narcissism, moving them into a more sustainable and effective collective state
Additionally, the use of communal primes or slogans, such as âtogether weâ or the famous âThis is Anfieldâ sign at Liverpool Football Club, may help to promote interdependence and connectedness among narcissistic coaches (Giacomin & Jordan, 2015).
Though individuals appreciate performative empathy by narcissistic leaders, most of the time it is almost immediately and easily detected.
From the perspective of the follower, such a position might be considered largely irrelevant; that is, if subordinates (e.g., athletes, employees, soldiers) believe that their (narcissistic) leader is being empathic toward them or is showing signs of modesty, then they are more likely to perceive them favorably. However, such displays of empathy and humility may simply reflect narcissistsâ selfenhancement tendencies. Narcissists are motivated to respond to certain situations, provided these situations are aligned with their personal goals (Morf et al., 2011; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). Therefore, if narcissists believe that they can gain self-enhancement (e.g., being seen as a good leader) from displaying empathy, then they are likely to engage in displays of empathy even if these displays are not entirely genuine
How and why they are detected is a great path for further research. For instance, most people have a metric of how truly empathic people will react, feeling deepening rapport, instead of a one-and-done âI established rapport, now Iâm doneâ experience or high responsiveness versus low responsiveness. For people more on the empathic end, they know what empathy looks like and it is not easy to mimic the unspoken/unsaid behaviors that follow on the heels of real empathy.
Exploring how moderating factors such as empathy and humility influence narcissistsâ leader behaviors, and whether such displays of empathic concern are strategic or perceived as genuine is worthy of empirical attention, as this issue has implications for researchers and applied practitioners seeking to understand what might make narcissistic leaders more effective.
Narcissistic leaders tend to evaluate their followers negatively across the board and often this results in them also being evaluated negatively. They do not naturally grock the feedback loop relationships of themselves to this emerging âsuperorganismâ and often struggle with this particular detail until the end. (Very popular celebrities that receive little to no pervasive negative feedback from non-pathological individuals (for instance, no matter how much you love your fans, there is probably a large incel body that will always be giving the celebrity negative feedback, this can be relatively safely disregarded for results based purposes) genuinely give the impression of loving their fans, and actually enjoying and appreciating them. This is not an accident.)
As narcissists show disproportionately aggressive reactions to negative feedback (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998), have a disagreeable interpersonal style (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001), and evaluate others negatively (Stoeber, Sherry, & Nealis, 2015), one might imagine that narcissistic followers would not rate their narcissistic leader particularly favorably.
Failed/pseudo-failed celebrities are more combative and competitive with their fanbase and potential fanbase, fail to engage it in a natural feedback loop of positivity, and ultimately are not very liked. They give a sense of fighting for the spotlight instead of the sense celebrities usually give of âthe camera loves themâ with the implicit message âand thereâs nothing for them to fight themselves into because of thatâ. Think of how Kurt Cobain mocked and half-assed his audience as opposed to how Taylor Swift or Beyonce is often seen interacting with their audience giving their full best each time.
Moreover, given that narcissistic leaders and followers consider themselves special and are both fighting for the spotlight, the narcissistic follower may feel that there is only room for one âspecialâ person (i.e., himself or herself) and so will rate the leader unfavorably.
Narcissists tend to normalize narcissism and create echo chambers of it relatively quickly.
Accordingly, narcissists are more tolerant of narcissistic others (Hart & Adams, 2014) and have similar personality profiles to their friends (i.e., someone who is friends with a narcissist is more likely to be narcissistic him/herself; MaaĂ, Lämmle Bensch, & Ziegler, 2016). Further, narcissistsâ relentless pursuit of self-enhancement may be more acceptable to other narcissists, because they share the same values (MaaĂ et al., 2016). Narcissists are also attracted to relationships with high-status others (Brunell & Campbell, 2011) and respond less negatively to ego threats from high-status others (Horton & Sedikides, 2009).
Narcissists do well with narcissistic leaders and rate them higher than non-narcissists.
Finally, evidence from education settings (Westerman, Whitaker, Bergman, Bergman, & Daly, 2016) indicates that greater congruence between student and faculty narcissism is associated with more positive student impressions of the faculty member and higher GPAs. In all, narcissists may rate their narcissistic leaders favorably and may see them as effective.
Due to mismatch issues, it may even be wise to match coaches/teachers on a narcissist/non-narcissist basis to get both populations results that work.
. Although it is probably not feasible (or ethically desirably) to match coach and athlete personality in team sports, greater empirical consideration of personality matching could pay dividends in individual settings, such as tennis and golf
Where research increases in narcissism, the grandiose vs. vulnerable divide becomes more about how much the narcissist can even afford to appear vulnerable without knowing they will suffer immediate abuse, torment and attack due to a constant and pervasive Dark Triad personality on which they are reliant. For instance, psychopaths naturally enjoy tormenting vulnerability simply because it is vulnerability in what is repeatedly reported as a primitive pathology (aka, they seemed like they were more like an animal in the midst of this or that torment, etc) It is not safe to be truly vulnerable around a real psychopath.
y. Much of the âtwo different coinsâ position is built on the premise that studies linking narcissistic grandiosity with indices of self-worth (such as implicit self-esteem) do not provide consistent support for the notion that grandiosity masks an underlying vulnerability (Bosson et al., 2008; but see Gregg & Sedikides, 2010). Our own psychodynamic leanings favor the âtwo sides of the same coinâ approach, particularly as the absence of a relationship between measures of grandiosity and vulnerability does not necessarily imply that they are separate. Indeed, for self-protection purposes (Sedikides, 2012), individuals might be less likely or willing to report being vulnerable.
Vulnerability may be so costly and expensive for these individuals that they have effectively made it red alert if it even attempts to break consciousness because the body and mind have internalized through development that they will never be able to afford vulnerability given what they have endured/witnessed and it is an inherent and heartbreaking dead end to even float it as a possibility. Every time it was even a possibility the vulnerability was immediately abused and mocked until the defenses were rigid and essentially permanent. It was better to adapt to ideologies that were congruent with these defenses than those that werenât, which would be too costly given their surroundings resistance to change.
Further, vulnerability may be deeply rooted or beyond awareness, and thus difficult to detect with the present measurement arsenal or methodological sophistication
In addition, their own continued disrespect of vulnerability helps identify the grandiose or the vulnerable narcissist. When the stakes are highest and the help is the most needed, the grandiose narcissist will not help then just to amplify the horrific element of such an act. They are identifiable by this. When the stakes are low, and the help is definitely needed, the vulnerable narcissist will not help in such a case because they see a lot of the self they reject in that situation, which is a low grade, irresolvable, vulnerability that haunts them until death.
In addition, narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability have different effects on prosocial behavior: Grandiosity predicts the withholding of help under high, but not low, social pressure, whereas vulnerability predicts less helping under low, but not high, social pressure (Lannin, Guyll, Krizan, Madon, & Cornish, 2014).
Grandiose narcissists perform well in situations that provide opportunities for glory.
but grandiosity on its own might be unlikely to culminate in the highest levels of performance. Specifically, performing well in situations that afford opportunities for glory (e.g., under pressure) provides narcissists with a way of buffering their fragile self. As such, the underlying narcissistic fragility might be the catalyst to enable the grandiose narcissist to achieve the highest performance levels.
Not all parts of NPI are maladapted, authority and self-sufficiency often result from high NPI scores amidst all the maladaption.
The adaptive components of the NPI reflect authority and self-sufficiency, whereas the maladaptive ones reflect entitlement, exhibitionism and exploitation. These constructs are so-called due to their effects on various socially desirable and non-desirable traits (Barry & Malkin, 2010).
However, maladaptive, unsupervised narcissistic elements lead to bad group outcomes
Similarly, maladaptive narcissism may be more interpersonally problematic than adaptive narcissism, such that it negatively predicts group outcomes (e.g., group cohesion, satisfaction). At the very least, researchers interested in how narcissistic grandiosity is linked with performance-related variables are likely to gain a more fine grained understanding by embracing this distinction.
A lot of this is cultural as well, with expectations of the âsupermanâ construct actively showing many signs of the grandiose narcissist
Action heroes think they are superior to others and satisfy their core self-motives (i.e., grandiosity, power, esteem, entitlement) through agentic means such as demonstrating competence and uniqueness as opposed to through communal means such as demonstrating warmth and compassion (Campbell et al., 2002).
Things get trickier when the communal narcissist actively tries to cultivate community values but in results and other-report clearly fails.
. Communal narcissists are saint-type individuals (Gebauer et al., 2012; Giacomin & Jordan, 2015; Luo et al., 2014) who self-enhance in communal domains, and so believe they are the most caring, most helpful, and most trustworthy. However, despite believing that they are communally exceptional individuals, communal narcissists are actually rated as low in communion (in terms of their behaviors and traits) by others (Gebauer et al., Study 5).
The communal narcissist may be particularly tragic because of how much they want to be the opposite but fail to be. It is a cause for future research.
However, whether teammates rate them so favorably remains to be seen. Similarly, communal narcissists might consider themselves effective leaders, because they believe they are caring and helpful. However, such attempts to self-enhance in the communal domain might backfire, because followers quickly see through hypocritical claims of communal excellence (Gebauer et al., 2012) and may infer that communal narcissists are ineffective leaders, perhaps even more so than agentic narcissists. The relevance of communal narcissism for performance environments is an exciting direction for research.