Is U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) a “Class-A narcissist,” as some press pundits and talk show doctors have charged, for his unfathomable hubris in tweeting naked photos of himself to young women?
Who knows? I think I’ll leave that kind of psychological labeling to Weiner’s own personal therapist, if he has one. (If he doesn’t, I’m guessing his wife will soon be insisting he get one.)
Weiner’s sext-capade, though, definitely puts him in the “creepy jerk” category — a category that you won’t find in the DSM, but one, sadly, with plenty of, um, members (see Favre, Brett).
All this talk about narcissism, however, reminded me of an interesting study published last month on the topic. The prevailing belief has been that narcissists — individuals who, as the Mayo Clinic notes, have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration, but also underlying (and unconscious) self-esteem issues — aren’t aware of this personality trait in themselves.
In other words, we’ve tended to assume that narcissists are self-delusional.
But the new study, which appeared online last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, revealed that narcissists are perfectly aware of what others think of them. In fact, they even acknowledge that they’re arrogant.
Here’s the abstract from the study, amusingly titled “You probably think this paper’s about you: Narcissists’ perception of their personality and reputation”:
Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Using both clinical and subclinical measures of narcissism, the authors examined others’ perceptions, self-perceptions, and meta-perceptions of narcissists across a wide range of traits for a new acquaintance and close other (Study 1), longitudinally with a group of new acquaintances (Study 2), and among coworkers (Study 3).
Results bring 3 surprising conclusions about narcissists: (a) they understand that others see them less positively than they see themselves (i.e., their meta-perceptions are less biased than are their self-perceptions), (b) they have some insight into the fact that they make positive first impressions that deteriorate over time, and (c) they have insight into their narcissistic personality (e.g., they describe themselves as arrogant). These findings shed light on some of the psychological mechanisms underlying narcissism.
