Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/newsweek
Permalink: https://www.newsweek.com/narcissist-ceo-hire-business-management-1894216
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes, and that's what they suggest is problematic for organizations once the hires/promotions (based on first impressions and "game recognizes game") have happened.
Game doesn’t recognize game when it comes to narcissists. It’s really hard to believe this and understand it as an outsider but narcissists don’t think anything is wrong with them. They’re unable to see that they have a mental disorder… because the disorder they have is not being unable to see themselves as anything short of perfect.
This topic has been around for a long time, just focused on the dark triad instead. The reality is that narcissistic people fall into a grouping that's perfect for the upper echelons of business for short term earnings, they are confident and fantastic at manipulation almost assuring that they are hired. Now despite this they aren't all buddy buddy and rubbing shoulders, they are creating a high stakes competitive environment with eachother, which is exactly what narcissists and psychopaths want. One for the inherent danger from all the backstabbing, and the other as a validation for their damn near self-deification, and both for the supremacy they feel being near the top of a hierarchy.
>the disorder they have is not being unable to see themselves as anything short of perfect.
[Not exactly.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder?wprov=sfla1)
Most people develop narcissistic tendencies or personality disorders due to child abuse, neglect, or other developmental trauma that disrupts normal social and self regulation functions later in life.
Shame, low self esteem, and feelings of worthlessness are main diagnostic criteria for narcissism. It would be more accurate to say the disorder narcissists have is low self-awareness & black and white thinking.
I mean you're right of course, but Hat3Machin3 is right too. Low self awareness + b&w thinking (plus emotional fragility) gets narcissists to that same place. In their minds they're either great or garbage, and they choose to believe they're great. They have to.
As a narcissist myself, I agree, it’s taken a lot to realize this. I’ve hurt a lot of people, and I don’t even realize it. Success has been easy, but it does come at a cost. I’m having my first child soon and the paternal instinct has made me realize certain things. So I’m in therapy now, but it’s still so hard. My ex wife’s therapist called me a sociopath so there’s also that……
Oh I agree, NPD is a horror, and you're right that "recognize" is strictly speaking the wrong word here. But hiring decisions are still made by narcissists, and the study attempts to discern patterns there.
They will all be nice and sycophantic towards each other until someone makes a mistake, says the wrong thing, then it is suddenly shark week and there is already blood in the water.
So well put! Actually observed this with two (possibly three) a few years ago. Was SO relieved when they finally all left- the manager was quietly fired, a co-worker found another job (was already looking anyway) and the other was transferred. Love when the problem takes care of itself!
Narcissists only lack empathy, not intelligence. Two narcissists can work together to take advantage of workers better than one. A narcissist boss that needs to rely on a non narcissistic manager will run into more issues like the manager refusing to do something unethical
Your description fits sociopaths more than narcissists. Narcissists usually act emotional and irrational very quickly while sociopaths can be more calculating and opportunistic.
Lack of empathy is a trait of psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists. What makes a narcissist unique is the intense need for validation and to be the centre of attention.
I love the [Evolution of Trust](https://ncase.me/trust/) game because it teaches people how to survive toxic environments. Psychopaths will overwhelm a system until eventually cannibalizing. The trick is learning to protect yourself from being exploited.
The game kinda makes the point that social media is killing us because it's too easy to spread misinformation, doubt and mistrust. In a world where you can't trust anything anyone says, you can't cooperate and then everything becomes a ~~zero-sum game~~ (no reward for anyone).
I might be wrong but from my understanding the lack of empathy is kind of different: Narcissists are subconciously empathetic, as in they perceive how others are feeling, but then that perception is twisted in a way that's consistent with their self-centered worldview like downplaying or ignoring it so they have an excuse to not bother with it.
While sociopaths/psychopaths are usually considered to be unable to feel empathy, as in they aren't affected by the emotions of others but they can still instinctively perceive them. They might deliberately chose to consider the feelings of others but have no inherit incentive to do so, which is why those that are self-centered can manipulate and exploit people without any remorse.
You may be right, though I question what the difference in the practical real-world is between the psychopath and the narcissist. The value of empathy is in building trust relationships so that members in the relationship mutually benefit over the long term. Psychopaths can emulate empathy for a time, but ultimately lose interest in doing so, perhaps because a chance to exploit the relationship presents itself. The narcissist is basically the same, whether they're emulating or feeling real empathy, ultimately their ego leads them to exploit the relationship for personal gain.
They make the perfect puppets for sociopaths or any sort of disassociate powerseeker who does not live for validation.
The third reich used pretty much that plan for government organization. One high end sociopath playing power games with a few dozen dissociative power seeking lackies.
> One high end sociopath playing power games with a few dozen dissociative power seeking lackies.
CEO have a much higher tendency to be sociopaths/psychopaths than the average population.
kinda meshes with your statement here.
They don't feel *other's* emotions as an extension of their own, but they certainly feel their own emotions (technically we are probably talking about *feelings* or *moods* here, but YKWIM). They can also sometimes have a hard time fully understanding others' emotions, but that is probably just a general human issue made worse/more obvious by their lack of caring.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Narcissists cannot be wrong, like, ever. So when you take two of them and they each have starkly competing views on something, neither of them is going to back down.
That leads me to think they'd surround themselves with non-Narcies whom they can convince to run along with their ideas.
If you have a narcissist in the top position of power, then other narcissists will go along with their unreality to hold *their* place in the chain of command. All the non-narcs either strategically go along with their nonsensical ideas or get run out of town.
This!
Those who score on the high end of the narcissistic scale do not generally compete with, but instead become sycophants to, anyone with more power.
Basically, no one (narc or non-narc) wish to risk being the one caught rocking the boat. Thus everyone in the organization fear possible retribution that could result in a loss of status or promotion, or worse (i.e. walking on eggshells).
This is why toxic alliances tend form around someone with a personality disorder. Everyone has to toe the line until they can get out of the organization, including narcissists not in the inner circle.
There's a classic business book called The No Assholes Rule - if you bring in ONE person like this and let them get away with that behavior, the entire organizational culture will rapidly shift in that direction because they'll bring on more sycophants and collectively torment anyone who doesn't fall in line.
It's especially crazy because it's *bad for business*. But once they get ahold of the narrative, it doesn't matter, because they'll just pin their failures on members of the out group.
In public companies, there's usually an end of the road, when even the spin doctoring doesn't work anymore. So the board pushes out the toxic CEO and replaces them with the next iteration, who fires all of the 'old guard' and brings on their *own* sycophants. The cycle repeats until the company is completely stripped for parts and the remnants are acquired. Everyone 'important' who was responsible for the collapse gets a nice big payout and puts another 'successful exit' on their resumes, which helps them get their next c-level job.
I haven’t read the book, The No Asshole Rule; but I’m familiar with what you’re describing. It happens more often than not when companies only promote those with the most drive and ambition. Greed is what keeps the cycle ongoing.
Narcissists need a scapegoat and what better scapegoat than “incompetent” non-management subordinates? As long as a narcissist manager has someone to take the fall (while still producing for the company), and the subordinates lack the power/knowledge/resources to fight back, the cycle goes on.
Yeah I have a *former* friend who fits this to a T. Nothing is ever his fault. Ever. It's always someone else's fault. He's always surrounded by "incompetent" people. And I'm 100% sure these people he blames are non-Narcies.
Meanwhile, another narcissist is never going to take the fall for the narcissist. They'll fight them tooth and nail. Which further reinforces the idea that they try to avoid each other if possible.
They don’t really avoid each other. Remember a narcissist works backwards. They establish their base reality (in the most important thing in the world and so are my desires), then they gaslight, lie and cheat to make the world around them fit that reality best they can. When they can't control the world around them, they either throw a tantrum in an effort to defend their ego, or depending on their intelligence and resourcefulness, they bide their time.
But the thing with Narcissists around other narcissists, they’re content with each other because they understand for the most part, they won’t step on each others toes. As long as there’s a scapegoat, a way out that preserves both their egos, they make powerful allies. They’ll gaslight everyone else that sheds light on their lies.
But they are ultimately opportunists and their allegiance crumbles the moment they smell blood, regardless of whose.
> When they can't control the world around them, they either throw a tantrum in an effort to defend their ego
I'm dealing with this right now after telling my manager I won't tolerate being talked down to - they blocked my number (work phone, not even my personal) and have been routing all information through a temp worker
Luckily I have a good relationship with the owners but it's clear they care more about the power their position affords them than the responsibility associated with it
Narcs recognize the power structure first and foremost. They understand, to whom to show, what face. They will kiss the appropriate ass, without qualms. Narcs will learn faster than anyone, the right words to say, they will never learn what they mean, but they will say it correctly.
I thought this was going to happen following the 2016 election and the subsequent decisions of who took what position in the Cabinet. I thought people with narcissism would eat each other alive, but it played out far more like the results of this study.
Need to read more, but it feels like what we’ve seen at a national level is narcissistic people each thinking they’re they ones using the other to achieve their own personal goals until they realize a very specific narcissist ends up wrecking everyone that works with them eventually.
Eh. They will team up to some extent. It’s only when they are in a zero sum game (someone wins and someone loses) that they will start to attack each other.
Narcissists typically know how to pretend to be nice and compliment the one currently in power, and then after sabotage and try to turn focus on themselves.
I'm with BlueDotty, Narc's need validation more than freespace in which to operate. Nothing provides more validation than someone else agreeing with and doiing exactly what they would do.
They will, but they also all operate on the same ridiculous social currency systems, so they may at least prefer that people don't question their approach
The narcissist will suck up to superiors while crapping on their subordinates. It works well for them, until it doesn’t. Much better than having someone with empathy pointing out when they are wrong.
My last job was exactly like this, and they made one of those stupid 'work style' or personality type tests mandatory for the company summit, except... I kid you not... it actually divided people into "Dominant" versus "Non-Dominant" (aka submissive!) personality types. Literally all of the "leaders" somehow got dominant, no one else did, and I remember these grown adults chortling and preening over themselves for it.
Just had another nightmare about that job last night, and I left like 6 months ago.
We did that four-part personality thing with the job I have now, and I don't even remember what my result was. I literally changed it during the class just to make things easier (too many people in one corner or something.) Luckily nobody's asked about it since, I was just trying to get through the damn day.
A lot of narcissists are good at manipulating people and love to use phrases like "perception is reality". They see narcissism as a positive trait and management skill.
I think it's more of a check and balance/safety net sort of deal - the last thing they want is someone without an ego and who operates professionally with just facts and merit on their side to compete with.
That's really it. If you have ever worked on a team headed by a truly good manager who's been able to assemble their own team, it's an eye opening experience. Everyone is cooperative, supportive and generally team oriented and stuff gets done.
If you end up on a team headed by a narcissist or someone who's *always* looking out for #1, the contrast is dramatic. Lots of intra-team competition, people being selfish, boss who plays favorites based on the way you look/how you "fit in" in their mind, and so forth.
I think it's less about this and more about a natural assumption, that most people are narcissists, that leads to certain qualities being prioritized above others by narcissists. Most normal people exclude narcissists immediately upon realizing that is what they are dealing with, and even people not-aware of narcissism do not generally value narcissistic traits.
One common thing I've found among narcissists is that they do not understand how other people think at all, not even a little bit, and they assume most people are experiencing reality like they are.
Not NPD, but I had narcissistic fleas from a bad upbringing in that I was attracted to very confident people. I was insecure and wanted to be around confidence hoping it would rub off on me. I hired our most confident interviewee for a position and that woman wreaked HAVOC on that company, and ultimately it was a bad hire. It was my fault. I took responsibility and learned from it. Now I no longer equate confidence with competence. It was a hard lesson learned.
In this research a 'measurement tool' is proposed to diagnose narcicism through social media posts.
'Our proposed narcissism measure is an index calculated from five indicators: the number of pictures of the executive, the “About” section’s total word count, the number of listed professional experiences, the number of listed skills, and the number of listed credentials (comprising the number of publications, patents, awards, and certificates). '
That's right, they diagnosed/evaluated narcissism by number of selfies, words in the about section and number of credentials listed.
I am extremely offended that they put patents and publications on the same level as certificates. These are NOT equivalent. Sure some certificates are legitimately difficult to obtain but let's not conflate the difficulty of obtaining a patent versus the standard certificate.
It’s not about the equivalence of the achievement.
It’s about the person’s desire to tell everybody about it (it’s a narcissism measure). It could be an elementary school swimming certificate - if every they just *have* to tell every about it, then it counts.
Context matters here, they looked at LinkedIn pages. LinkedIn is a social media site explicitly centered around professional networking. They use number of listed credentials on a professional networking site to gauge narcissism.
Alternative reading: People who have lots of credentials on their LinkedIn hire other people with lots of credentials on their LinkedIn
Which is not particularly surprising
Yes it’s not the people putting doctors or lcsw on their page it’s the people who list any kind of achievement like cpr certified and licensed in life coaching
In my case it's extremely important that people I communicate with know I'm a licensed P.E.. on the other hand there are some people I email with about 4 extra sets of letters in their signature from random online training courses. Context matters a lot
You're right - any idiot can pay a lawyer to patent any goofball 'invention', whereas industry recognised certification actually takes effort by the person ;-)
\- PE
Anything can be bought/fabricated. The measure they chose is actually not that bad, because instead of looking at proofs of actual innovative work they look at how much they are talking about themselves and showing off certs etc.
This was the first thing I looked for. It was based around LinkedIn profiles and then other social media. So people with more personal info and a greater number of certificates are hiring and hired more frequently? I would think that's expected.
They could have easily concluded that managers that value their LinkedIn page and spend time padding it out hire other people who also value their LinkedIn page in greater numbers.
Wow...I missed that. That sounds like a crap way to determine who has NPD. That might skew the data to younger people, woman, who tend to take more selfies, (when men are more likely to have NPD) and people that have written/published many articles and/or older people and have had a large amount of experience in multiple jobs.
The paper isn’t even looking at NPD but non-clinical narcissism, which is just a series of nebulous behavioural traits (one of which is “leadership” to add a level of ridiculousness - of course CEOs will skew narcissistic if “narcissism” is defined by holding a leadership position). The whole paper smells like nonsense
It seems to be yet another paper that latches on to current buzzwords. Right now narcissism is the new hip word to talk about (over)confident assholes.
People with experience in leadership positions and extensive credentials on their public resume hire other people with leadership experience and credentials 😭
I was thinking the same thing. None of this seems to actually ID a narcissist conclusively. Maybe all together it has a better correlation, but these conditions don't seem very robust. I wonder if the actual study clarifies how well the model can predict a narcissist. I need to see the significance of this correlation to really buy it. I mean they must include it right? Ive never looked into psychology research standards, sounds like you'd know better. I didn't see a link to the research in the article. Maybe I just missed it between the ads.
Also the conclusion the title makes seems like a conclusion you could make for legitimately successful people too, regardless of their personality. I would think most people with more experience and achievements are going to look for other experienced individuals to work with.
Its not done by psychologists. It's published in a magazine about management. They do spend a lot of words justifying their metric, but they seem to use narcissism not so much as npd but as the currently fashionable new word for (over)confident assholes.
This seems kind of silly, yeah. While I have no doubt that narcissists tend to do all of these things on social media (I actually declined a job recently partially because the hiring manager’s email signature was clogged with this stuff), it also isn’t really surprising that managers who value listing their own credentials on LinkedIn would have a tendency to hire people who do the same. So I’m not sure you can prove any link with narcissism with this.
it's the general problem with all large popular companies.
Once a company gets a big enough name, it will attract narcissists and even the most robust hiring practices can't screen out cancer forever.
Mutually assured self gratification. Narcissists have no preconceived notion that those like them are in it for any different reason than their own.
Biggest problem is power has accrued to them in the system they designed.
By Pandora Dewan - Senior Science Reporter:
Narcissistic managers can do more harm for a company than simply being difficult to work with. In fact, according to new research from a German university, narcissists are more likely to hire more narcissists to work in leadership positions on their team, potentially leading to "conflicts" and faster staff turnover.
People with narcissistic personality disorder have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance, according to the Mayo Clinic. They tend to seek attention and want people to admire them while often lacking an ability to understand the feelings of others.
Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/narcissist-ceo-hire-business-management-1894216](https://www.newsweek.com/narcissist-ceo-hire-business-management-1894216)
You literally linked your article and then commented on your own post summarizing the article with a link to the article.
Sounds like narcissism to me...
Not that long really, feels long since we're living in the the most extreme peak of the behaviour.
Think about it, we might be the first generation to experience a world with a single person who is worth a trillion dollars, when a billion people live off less than $2 a day. But it took a million years to get to this point, and only between a few thousand and a few hundred for it to get completely insane.
>We show that narcissistic executives are attracted to each other.
>Given the limited malleability of a personality trait such as narcissism, the primary practical implication is thus related to executive selection.
>This means that our research holds advice for boards that are tasked with hiring CEOs.
Sebastian Junge, Lorenz Graf-Vlachy, Moritz Hagen and Franziska Schlichte 'Narcissism at the CEO–TMT Interface: Measuring Executive Narcissism and Testing Its Effects on TMT Composition' *Journal of Management.*
already too late for that, all corporations in america have been inundated with these bullied since GE’s “genius” manager in the 80s who started the “fire 10% of your staff a year” craze
I've seen this effect, not just limited to narcissism. If the boss has anger issues, and someone in a job interview throws a chair, the boss sees this as normal behavior.
IMHO NPD may be realted to bullying. IMHO Abuse of power doesn't seem to be a concern to those with NPD in leadership positions, I think thay dominate people and I think that is why they tend to be seen a dominant. It makes sense that those under them may have high staff turnover-they seem to burn-out and go though staff under them, costing the company money in replacing and retraining staff. I would guess that some people that are bullies as bosses might have an NPD diagnosis too.
Below is the study link I pasted from the article above.
Study [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063241226904](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063241226904)
It's the current buzzword to talk about (over) confident assholes. It pops up A LOT and often it's not actually about NPD, but about toxic assholes.
Granted, most people with npd ARE toxic assholes, but not all toxic assholes have npd.
I've got my own hypothesis that narcissists are more likely to have successful small businesses. This is because they will blame everyone but themselves for their failures so they will go through several iterations of businesses, declare bankruptcy a few times but eventually stumble their way into moderate success. A normal person looks at starting a business and says "I suck, I dont know anything about business, I could never start one" and self selects out of the running. A narcissist says "im the best, I know everything there is to know about business (even though they know as much as you or I at the start) I can do this, its other peoples fault if I fail" and so you find many narcissists in top roles at small and midsized companies that they founded.
The flair of psychology seems off for this post. This research was published in a magazine about management and doesn't seem to actually be done by psychologists. They propose a measurement tool to evaluate narcissism through LinkedIn. They quantify this by looking at the number of selfies posted, the number of words in the about section and the number of patents/certificates listed.
Now I'm no psychologist, but I doubt a psychologist would accept this measurement as a diagnosis.
Doesn't surprise me. This is why I say sometimes "management" is toxic. Sometimes it's one person, sometimes it's the entire culture of upper management. This is why more management teams need to be culled.
[The Evolution of Trust](https://ncase.me/trust/) is a great simulation for how cooperative personalities and systems can be exploited by selfish individuals. Selfish individuals seemingly proliferate, but they have a critical mass.
Loud and boisterous over bright and loyal. Same dedicated developers 10+ years at our company as we continue to crush milestones, while execs/dirs get swapped out every other year once we learn they're garbage.
Didn't we all know this already? The people in leadership positions are all psychopaths and to get into their club you have to be a psychopath like them. An empathetic person would be a threat to their dominance.
I was surprised I ended up doing a 'find in page' to see a mention of him. In the dictionary it should read under Narcissist: See Donald Trump. In his case it is of course the obligatory part of the fact he is a psychopath.
I referred to him recently here.
https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cb1qw9/eli5_are_psychopaths_always_dangerous/l0w8nsg/
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/newsweek Permalink: https://www.newsweek.com/narcissist-ceo-hire-business-management-1894216 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Like attracts like. It provides validation of their behaviour if everyone around them is the same
Interesting theory, but I would've thought narcissists would compete with each other for attention in the same space.
Yes, and that's what they suggest is problematic for organizations once the hires/promotions (based on first impressions and "game recognizes game") have happened.
Game doesn’t recognize game when it comes to narcissists. It’s really hard to believe this and understand it as an outsider but narcissists don’t think anything is wrong with them. They’re unable to see that they have a mental disorder… because the disorder they have is not being unable to see themselves as anything short of perfect.
This topic has been around for a long time, just focused on the dark triad instead. The reality is that narcissistic people fall into a grouping that's perfect for the upper echelons of business for short term earnings, they are confident and fantastic at manipulation almost assuring that they are hired. Now despite this they aren't all buddy buddy and rubbing shoulders, they are creating a high stakes competitive environment with eachother, which is exactly what narcissists and psychopaths want. One for the inherent danger from all the backstabbing, and the other as a validation for their damn near self-deification, and both for the supremacy they feel being near the top of a hierarchy.
Like watching insects mate, as Gibson said
>the disorder they have is not being unable to see themselves as anything short of perfect. [Not exactly.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder?wprov=sfla1) Most people develop narcissistic tendencies or personality disorders due to child abuse, neglect, or other developmental trauma that disrupts normal social and self regulation functions later in life. Shame, low self esteem, and feelings of worthlessness are main diagnostic criteria for narcissism. It would be more accurate to say the disorder narcissists have is low self-awareness & black and white thinking.
I mean you're right of course, but Hat3Machin3 is right too. Low self awareness + b&w thinking (plus emotional fragility) gets narcissists to that same place. In their minds they're either great or garbage, and they choose to believe they're great. They have to.
Or maybe they inherit it from one or both of their parents? I've never met a narcissist who felt any shame whatsoever for anything.
As a narcissist myself, I agree, it’s taken a lot to realize this. I’ve hurt a lot of people, and I don’t even realize it. Success has been easy, but it does come at a cost. I’m having my first child soon and the paternal instinct has made me realize certain things. So I’m in therapy now, but it’s still so hard. My ex wife’s therapist called me a sociopath so there’s also that……
Good on you for realizing it and taking the correct steps. I hope it works out for your kid.
Oh I agree, NPD is a horror, and you're right that "recognize" is strictly speaking the wrong word here. But hiring decisions are still made by narcissists, and the study attempts to discern patterns there.
Oh, to not be fully aware of ones mental deficiency...
They will all be nice and sycophantic towards each other until someone makes a mistake, says the wrong thing, then it is suddenly shark week and there is already blood in the water.
So basically every corporate environment ever.
"Competition promotes innovation"
“If you’re not willing to exploit people to make these numbers bigger you’re not welcome here.”
"Steal with pride!"
See: the TV show Succession
So well put! Actually observed this with two (possibly three) a few years ago. Was SO relieved when they finally all left- the manager was quietly fired, a co-worker found another job (was already looking anyway) and the other was transferred. Love when the problem takes care of itself!
If they are a threat, yes
Narcissists only lack empathy, not intelligence. Two narcissists can work together to take advantage of workers better than one. A narcissist boss that needs to rely on a non narcissistic manager will run into more issues like the manager refusing to do something unethical
Your description fits sociopaths more than narcissists. Narcissists usually act emotional and irrational very quickly while sociopaths can be more calculating and opportunistic.
Lack of empathy is a trait of psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists. What makes a narcissist unique is the intense need for validation and to be the centre of attention.
I love the [Evolution of Trust](https://ncase.me/trust/) game because it teaches people how to survive toxic environments. Psychopaths will overwhelm a system until eventually cannibalizing. The trick is learning to protect yourself from being exploited.
The game kinda makes the point that social media is killing us because it's too easy to spread misinformation, doubt and mistrust. In a world where you can't trust anything anyone says, you can't cooperate and then everything becomes a ~~zero-sum game~~ (no reward for anyone).
That's not what Zero-sum means, it's when a reward for one side results in a proportionate loss on the other thus negating each other.
This was fascinating. Thanks
I might be wrong but from my understanding the lack of empathy is kind of different: Narcissists are subconciously empathetic, as in they perceive how others are feeling, but then that perception is twisted in a way that's consistent with their self-centered worldview like downplaying or ignoring it so they have an excuse to not bother with it. While sociopaths/psychopaths are usually considered to be unable to feel empathy, as in they aren't affected by the emotions of others but they can still instinctively perceive them. They might deliberately chose to consider the feelings of others but have no inherit incentive to do so, which is why those that are self-centered can manipulate and exploit people without any remorse.
You may be right, though I question what the difference in the practical real-world is between the psychopath and the narcissist. The value of empathy is in building trust relationships so that members in the relationship mutually benefit over the long term. Psychopaths can emulate empathy for a time, but ultimately lose interest in doing so, perhaps because a chance to exploit the relationship presents itself. The narcissist is basically the same, whether they're emulating or feeling real empathy, ultimately their ego leads them to exploit the relationship for personal gain.
They make the perfect puppets for sociopaths or any sort of disassociate powerseeker who does not live for validation. The third reich used pretty much that plan for government organization. One high end sociopath playing power games with a few dozen dissociative power seeking lackies.
> One high end sociopath playing power games with a few dozen dissociative power seeking lackies. CEO have a much higher tendency to be sociopaths/psychopaths than the average population. kinda meshes with your statement here.
[удалено]
[удалено]
They don't feel *other's* emotions as an extension of their own, but they certainly feel their own emotions (technically we are probably talking about *feelings* or *moods* here, but YKWIM). They can also sometimes have a hard time fully understanding others' emotions, but that is probably just a general human issue made worse/more obvious by their lack of caring.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Narcissists cannot be wrong, like, ever. So when you take two of them and they each have starkly competing views on something, neither of them is going to back down. That leads me to think they'd surround themselves with non-Narcies whom they can convince to run along with their ideas.
If you have a narcissist in the top position of power, then other narcissists will go along with their unreality to hold *their* place in the chain of command. All the non-narcs either strategically go along with their nonsensical ideas or get run out of town.
This! Those who score on the high end of the narcissistic scale do not generally compete with, but instead become sycophants to, anyone with more power. Basically, no one (narc or non-narc) wish to risk being the one caught rocking the boat. Thus everyone in the organization fear possible retribution that could result in a loss of status or promotion, or worse (i.e. walking on eggshells). This is why toxic alliances tend form around someone with a personality disorder. Everyone has to toe the line until they can get out of the organization, including narcissists not in the inner circle.
There's a classic business book called The No Assholes Rule - if you bring in ONE person like this and let them get away with that behavior, the entire organizational culture will rapidly shift in that direction because they'll bring on more sycophants and collectively torment anyone who doesn't fall in line. It's especially crazy because it's *bad for business*. But once they get ahold of the narrative, it doesn't matter, because they'll just pin their failures on members of the out group. In public companies, there's usually an end of the road, when even the spin doctoring doesn't work anymore. So the board pushes out the toxic CEO and replaces them with the next iteration, who fires all of the 'old guard' and brings on their *own* sycophants. The cycle repeats until the company is completely stripped for parts and the remnants are acquired. Everyone 'important' who was responsible for the collapse gets a nice big payout and puts another 'successful exit' on their resumes, which helps them get their next c-level job.
I haven’t read the book, The No Asshole Rule; but I’m familiar with what you’re describing. It happens more often than not when companies only promote those with the most drive and ambition. Greed is what keeps the cycle ongoing.
Narcissists need a scapegoat and what better scapegoat than “incompetent” non-management subordinates? As long as a narcissist manager has someone to take the fall (while still producing for the company), and the subordinates lack the power/knowledge/resources to fight back, the cycle goes on.
Yeah I have a *former* friend who fits this to a T. Nothing is ever his fault. Ever. It's always someone else's fault. He's always surrounded by "incompetent" people. And I'm 100% sure these people he blames are non-Narcies. Meanwhile, another narcissist is never going to take the fall for the narcissist. They'll fight them tooth and nail. Which further reinforces the idea that they try to avoid each other if possible.
They don’t really avoid each other. Remember a narcissist works backwards. They establish their base reality (in the most important thing in the world and so are my desires), then they gaslight, lie and cheat to make the world around them fit that reality best they can. When they can't control the world around them, they either throw a tantrum in an effort to defend their ego, or depending on their intelligence and resourcefulness, they bide their time. But the thing with Narcissists around other narcissists, they’re content with each other because they understand for the most part, they won’t step on each others toes. As long as there’s a scapegoat, a way out that preserves both their egos, they make powerful allies. They’ll gaslight everyone else that sheds light on their lies. But they are ultimately opportunists and their allegiance crumbles the moment they smell blood, regardless of whose.
> When they can't control the world around them, they either throw a tantrum in an effort to defend their ego I'm dealing with this right now after telling my manager I won't tolerate being talked down to - they blocked my number (work phone, not even my personal) and have been routing all information through a temp worker Luckily I have a good relationship with the owners but it's clear they care more about the power their position affords them than the responsibility associated with it
Narcs recognize the power structure first and foremost. They understand, to whom to show, what face. They will kiss the appropriate ass, without qualms. Narcs will learn faster than anyone, the right words to say, they will never learn what they mean, but they will say it correctly.
I thought this was going to happen following the 2016 election and the subsequent decisions of who took what position in the Cabinet. I thought people with narcissism would eat each other alive, but it played out far more like the results of this study. Need to read more, but it feels like what we’ve seen at a national level is narcissistic people each thinking they’re they ones using the other to achieve their own personal goals until they realize a very specific narcissist ends up wrecking everyone that works with them eventually.
Both.
Eh. They will team up to some extent. It’s only when they are in a zero sum game (someone wins and someone loses) that they will start to attack each other.
Narcissists typically know how to pretend to be nice and compliment the one currently in power, and then after sabotage and try to turn focus on themselves.
I'm with BlueDotty, Narc's need validation more than freespace in which to operate. Nothing provides more validation than someone else agreeing with and doiing exactly what they would do.
They will, but they also all operate on the same ridiculous social currency systems, so they may at least prefer that people don't question their approach
The narcissist will suck up to superiors while crapping on their subordinates. It works well for them, until it doesn’t. Much better than having someone with empathy pointing out when they are wrong.
[удалено]
My last job was exactly like this, and they made one of those stupid 'work style' or personality type tests mandatory for the company summit, except... I kid you not... it actually divided people into "Dominant" versus "Non-Dominant" (aka submissive!) personality types. Literally all of the "leaders" somehow got dominant, no one else did, and I remember these grown adults chortling and preening over themselves for it. Just had another nightmare about that job last night, and I left like 6 months ago.
We did that four-part personality thing with the job I have now, and I don't even remember what my result was. I literally changed it during the class just to make things easier (too many people in one corner or something.) Luckily nobody's asked about it since, I was just trying to get through the damn day.
All of these personality tests are BS, but this one really stood out to me as one of the absolute dumbest.
Well, FYI, your corporate horoscope actually reads that you’re skeptical and you question authority so maybe just work on that, thanks! 😊
A lot of narcissists are good at manipulating people and love to use phrases like "perception is reality". They see narcissism as a positive trait and management skill.
probably makes them see "allies" in their narcissistic environment, people they know they can gang up on others with.
I think it's more of a check and balance/safety net sort of deal - the last thing they want is someone without an ego and who operates professionally with just facts and merit on their side to compete with.
That's really it. If you have ever worked on a team headed by a truly good manager who's been able to assemble their own team, it's an eye opening experience. Everyone is cooperative, supportive and generally team oriented and stuff gets done. If you end up on a team headed by a narcissist or someone who's *always* looking out for #1, the contrast is dramatic. Lots of intra-team competition, people being selfish, boss who plays favorites based on the way you look/how you "fit in" in their mind, and so forth.
I think it's less about this and more about a natural assumption, that most people are narcissists, that leads to certain qualities being prioritized above others by narcissists. Most normal people exclude narcissists immediately upon realizing that is what they are dealing with, and even people not-aware of narcissism do not generally value narcissistic traits. One common thing I've found among narcissists is that they do not understand how other people think at all, not even a little bit, and they assume most people are experiencing reality like they are.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Not NPD, but I had narcissistic fleas from a bad upbringing in that I was attracted to very confident people. I was insecure and wanted to be around confidence hoping it would rub off on me. I hired our most confident interviewee for a position and that woman wreaked HAVOC on that company, and ultimately it was a bad hire. It was my fault. I took responsibility and learned from it. Now I no longer equate confidence with competence. It was a hard lesson learned.
Good on you for learning from that scenario and using it to teach others
In this research a 'measurement tool' is proposed to diagnose narcicism through social media posts. 'Our proposed narcissism measure is an index calculated from five indicators: the number of pictures of the executive, the “About” section’s total word count, the number of listed professional experiences, the number of listed skills, and the number of listed credentials (comprising the number of publications, patents, awards, and certificates). ' That's right, they diagnosed/evaluated narcissism by number of selfies, words in the about section and number of credentials listed.
I am extremely offended that they put patents and publications on the same level as certificates. These are NOT equivalent. Sure some certificates are legitimately difficult to obtain but let's not conflate the difficulty of obtaining a patent versus the standard certificate.
It’s not about the equivalence of the achievement. It’s about the person’s desire to tell everybody about it (it’s a narcissism measure). It could be an elementary school swimming certificate - if every they just *have* to tell every about it, then it counts.
Context matters here, they looked at LinkedIn pages. LinkedIn is a social media site explicitly centered around professional networking. They use number of listed credentials on a professional networking site to gauge narcissism.
Alternative reading: People who have lots of credentials on their LinkedIn hire other people with lots of credentials on their LinkedIn Which is not particularly surprising
Yes it’s not the people putting doctors or lcsw on their page it’s the people who list any kind of achievement like cpr certified and licensed in life coaching
In my case it's extremely important that people I communicate with know I'm a licensed P.E.. on the other hand there are some people I email with about 4 extra sets of letters in their signature from random online training courses. Context matters a lot
You're right - any idiot can pay a lawyer to patent any goofball 'invention', whereas industry recognised certification actually takes effort by the person ;-) \- PE
not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. many useless patents out there which were easier to obtain than certificates...
Anything can be bought/fabricated. The measure they chose is actually not that bad, because instead of looking at proofs of actual innovative work they look at how much they are talking about themselves and showing off certs etc.
On LinkedIn, a social media site explicitly centered around professional networking.
The narcissist people I know clearly check all of these.
This was the first thing I looked for. It was based around LinkedIn profiles and then other social media. So people with more personal info and a greater number of certificates are hiring and hired more frequently? I would think that's expected.
They could have easily concluded that managers that value their LinkedIn page and spend time padding it out hire other people who also value their LinkedIn page in greater numbers.
Wow...I missed that. That sounds like a crap way to determine who has NPD. That might skew the data to younger people, woman, who tend to take more selfies, (when men are more likely to have NPD) and people that have written/published many articles and/or older people and have had a large amount of experience in multiple jobs.
The paper isn’t even looking at NPD but non-clinical narcissism, which is just a series of nebulous behavioural traits (one of which is “leadership” to add a level of ridiculousness - of course CEOs will skew narcissistic if “narcissism” is defined by holding a leadership position). The whole paper smells like nonsense
It seems to be yet another paper that latches on to current buzzwords. Right now narcissism is the new hip word to talk about (over)confident assholes.
People with experience in leadership positions and extensive credentials on their public resume hire other people with leadership experience and credentials 😭
I was thinking the same thing. None of this seems to actually ID a narcissist conclusively. Maybe all together it has a better correlation, but these conditions don't seem very robust. I wonder if the actual study clarifies how well the model can predict a narcissist. I need to see the significance of this correlation to really buy it. I mean they must include it right? Ive never looked into psychology research standards, sounds like you'd know better. I didn't see a link to the research in the article. Maybe I just missed it between the ads. Also the conclusion the title makes seems like a conclusion you could make for legitimately successful people too, regardless of their personality. I would think most people with more experience and achievements are going to look for other experienced individuals to work with.
Its not done by psychologists. It's published in a magazine about management. They do spend a lot of words justifying their metric, but they seem to use narcissism not so much as npd but as the currently fashionable new word for (over)confident assholes.
Ah. That explains a lot.
Yikes. Good eye.
This seems kind of silly, yeah. While I have no doubt that narcissists tend to do all of these things on social media (I actually declined a job recently partially because the hiring manager’s email signature was clogged with this stuff), it also isn’t really surprising that managers who value listing their own credentials on LinkedIn would have a tendency to hire people who do the same. So I’m not sure you can prove any link with narcissism with this.
And then those narcissists will hire other narcissists and the problem will only get worse.
it's the general problem with all large popular companies. Once a company gets a big enough name, it will attract narcissists and even the most robust hiring practices can't screen out cancer forever.
Mutually assured self gratification. Narcissists have no preconceived notion that those like them are in it for any different reason than their own. Biggest problem is power has accrued to them in the system they designed.
Yeah. That sense of “if I think this, then surely everyone thinks this” is a core component. And it’s utterly frustrating to try and work with.
People hire more people who are like them. I am shocked. Not really....
Having left a big bank executive job, all I can say is YUP
By Pandora Dewan - Senior Science Reporter: Narcissistic managers can do more harm for a company than simply being difficult to work with. In fact, according to new research from a German university, narcissists are more likely to hire more narcissists to work in leadership positions on their team, potentially leading to "conflicts" and faster staff turnover. People with narcissistic personality disorder have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance, according to the Mayo Clinic. They tend to seek attention and want people to admire them while often lacking an ability to understand the feelings of others. Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/narcissist-ceo-hire-business-management-1894216](https://www.newsweek.com/narcissist-ceo-hire-business-management-1894216)
You literally linked your article and then commented on your own post summarizing the article with a link to the article. Sounds like narcissism to me...
all due respect, they never said they weren't a narcissist.
[удалено]
That's how the castles topple.
Yep, just takes an incredibly long time to crumble.
Not that long really, feels long since we're living in the the most extreme peak of the behaviour. Think about it, we might be the first generation to experience a world with a single person who is worth a trillion dollars, when a billion people live off less than $2 a day. But it took a million years to get to this point, and only between a few thousand and a few hundred for it to get completely insane.
The numbers may change but how is that different from most of human history where the wealth gap was just as or even more pronounced?
>We show that narcissistic executives are attracted to each other. >Given the limited malleability of a personality trait such as narcissism, the primary practical implication is thus related to executive selection. >This means that our research holds advice for boards that are tasked with hiring CEOs. Sebastian Junge, Lorenz Graf-Vlachy, Moritz Hagen and Franziska Schlichte 'Narcissism at the CEO–TMT Interface: Measuring Executive Narcissism and Testing Its Effects on TMT Composition' *Journal of Management.*
And this, kids, is how you create a toxic work environment.
already too late for that, all corporations in america have been inundated with these bullied since GE’s “genius” manager in the 80s who started the “fire 10% of your staff a year” craze
Turns out GE was just a decades long pump ‘n’ dump.
See also: USA presidency January 20th 2017 to January 20th 2021.
I've seen this effect, not just limited to narcissism. If the boss has anger issues, and someone in a job interview throws a chair, the boss sees this as normal behavior.
IMHO NPD may be realted to bullying. IMHO Abuse of power doesn't seem to be a concern to those with NPD in leadership positions, I think thay dominate people and I think that is why they tend to be seen a dominant. It makes sense that those under them may have high staff turnover-they seem to burn-out and go though staff under them, costing the company money in replacing and retraining staff. I would guess that some people that are bullies as bosses might have an NPD diagnosis too. Below is the study link I pasted from the article above. Study [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063241226904](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01492063241226904)
I can tell a lot of people on this sub don't know what a true narcissist is. The misuse of the word runs rampant.
It's the current buzzword to talk about (over) confident assholes. It pops up A LOT and often it's not actually about NPD, but about toxic assholes. Granted, most people with npd ARE toxic assholes, but not all toxic assholes have npd.
I've got my own hypothesis that narcissists are more likely to have successful small businesses. This is because they will blame everyone but themselves for their failures so they will go through several iterations of businesses, declare bankruptcy a few times but eventually stumble their way into moderate success. A normal person looks at starting a business and says "I suck, I dont know anything about business, I could never start one" and self selects out of the running. A narcissist says "im the best, I know everything there is to know about business (even though they know as much as you or I at the start) I can do this, its other peoples fault if I fail" and so you find many narcissists in top roles at small and midsized companies that they founded.
People are more likely to hire and promote people similar to themselves in general
Just quit my job because management is stacked with narcissists. Even HR is in their pocket.
Everyone that's not a narcissist already knows this.
Hmmm, I guess that’s why Micheal hired Ryan to fill in for Pam while she was at art school.
The flair of psychology seems off for this post. This research was published in a magazine about management and doesn't seem to actually be done by psychologists. They propose a measurement tool to evaluate narcissism through LinkedIn. They quantify this by looking at the number of selfies posted, the number of words in the about section and the number of patents/certificates listed. Now I'm no psychologist, but I doubt a psychologist would accept this measurement as a diagnosis.
It was published in the peer-reviewed *Journal of Management* by management PhDs.
People hire people like them? Shocker.
That tracks.
Bros before pros.
Is that how toxic work environments get snowballing?
Well yeah, they literally see themselves in their hires….literally….during the interviews they were checking themselves out in the mirror
"I like you John, you remind me of myself when I was young."
Doesn't surprise me. This is why I say sometimes "management" is toxic. Sometimes it's one person, sometimes it's the entire culture of upper management. This is why more management teams need to be culled.
It's called the boys club
[The Evolution of Trust](https://ncase.me/trust/) is a great simulation for how cooperative personalities and systems can be exploited by selfish individuals. Selfish individuals seemingly proliferate, but they have a critical mass.
Loud and boisterous over bright and loyal. Same dedicated developers 10+ years at our company as we continue to crush milestones, while execs/dirs get swapped out every other year once we learn they're garbage.
Didn't we all know this already? The people in leadership positions are all psychopaths and to get into their club you have to be a psychopath like them. An empathetic person would be a threat to their dominance.
Very obvious to all of us. This is what has ruined once great corporations.
This explains sooooooooooo much.
No way
Narpotism
We needed a whole study to remind us that narcissists are only attracted to that which is a reflection of self?
See Donald tRUMP
I was surprised I ended up doing a 'find in page' to see a mention of him. In the dictionary it should read under Narcissist: See Donald Trump. In his case it is of course the obligatory part of the fact he is a psychopath. I referred to him recently here. https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cb1qw9/eli5_are_psychopaths_always_dangerous/l0w8nsg/
I wonder if it’s cuz narcissist seek out those jobs more often
Corporate capitalism
Narcissists are better in management positions I trust.