Key Points
People who are high in narcissism tend not to be very popular once people get to know them well.
However, they often achieve great success in certain areas, such as the workplace.
New research shows the two conditions behind this paradox of narcissistic success.
Escaping the grip of a narcissist may be a matter of realizing that you don’t need them to improve your life.
When you think about the people skills of a narcissist, you probably don’t picture them particularly well in the interpersonal department. Maybe you have an acquaintance you see around town whose arrogant and selfish traits still bother you. Today, they stop chatting with you and manage to “slip” the fact that they just got a promotion at work into the conversation. You wonder how someone so annoying and unlikable can make such a positive impression on those in power.
More often than not, people who are high in narcissism don’t have much luck in their relationships, at least according to research on their chances of keeping a partner after the initial glow wears off. However, in other areas of life, they may become very successful and, like your acquaintances, may advance in the career ladder.
The Paradox of Narcissistic Success
According to Erica Chow and colleagues from Hong Kong Baptist University (2022), although narcissism is generally viewed as a “social problem,” people with this trait “are also portrayed as having the charisma to attract people.” They can, paradoxically, “have the ability to inspire and influence people mysteriously,” leading them to become “leaders in different sectors of society, around the world, and throughout history” (pp. 783–784). When you think about this statement, you are very likely to agree with it based on your reflections on the personalities of some political leaders.
Shaw and her colleagues decided to delve into this paradoxical state of affairs by devising two studies that allowed them to analyze the factors that might lead at least some narcissists to avoid the stigma of their unpleasant personality traits and gain this mysterious power.
As a theoretical background for their research, the Hong Kong researchers do not rely on a deep psychodynamic approach but instead draw from what is called a social constructionist view of personality. This approach asserts that your personality is, as the term suggests, “constructed” by the way others perceive you. People look at your behavior and, from that evidence, infer what qualities within you produce that behavior. It doesn’t take anything too complicated, under this view, to explain why others see narcissists as having selfish and grandiose traits. It’s just that narcissists behave that way.
Moving on to understanding what makes narcissists paradoxically popular, Shaw and others suggest that the first component involves dependence on authority. If others depend on an individual, that individual is more likely to gain social acceptance. If you need this person to achieve your own goals, you’re likely to want to include this person in your group.
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The second part of understanding narcissism’s popularity, according to the researchers, is expertise. Someone truly good at their job not only helps ensure the group’s success, but can also “provide valuable knowledge, skills, and resources to other team members” (p. 785).
Think of someone who, despite being highly narcissistic, is extremely helpful in their ability to teach you a skill you want to acquire. Maybe you’re taking a course to hone your skills in your favorite hobby. The teacher’s constant self-deprecating comments annoy you to no end, but they have tremendous expertise in that particular area. As it turns out, you even go so far as to invite the teacher to lunch with you and your fellow students just so you can get more out of their heads.
Playing the Two Parts of the Narcissism Paradox
Hong Kong researchers argue that narcissists who can exert their power over others are those who have this high level of desirable expertise. The combination of expertise and reliance on authority, Xu and others argue, can overcome the normal aversion people feel toward individuals who constantly demand admiration and attention.
In two field studies, Xu and her colleagues conducted time-separated studies, each one month apart, using teams of employees in two call centers located in China. Workgroups in these organizations completed both self-reported measures of their levels of narcissism as well as ratings of the traits of their workgroup members.
Each workgroup member rated each other’s expertise in the aspects of work required for competence. Participants also completed measures of interdependence with each other using items such as “Our group members ‘sink or swim’ together.” In the first study, social ostracism was used as the dependent measure; the second study expanded the outcome measures to include social inclusion and popularity.
An advantage of this field method was that the research team was able to capture all but one measure of narcissism using ratings that workgroup members gave to each other. For example, on the social ostracism measure, participants rated their coworkers on items such as “At work, I treated [X] as if he were not there.”
Each group member received his or her social ostracism score based on the average ratings given by everyone. Similarly, on the popularity rating, group members rated each other using items such as “This person is looked upon with favor.”
Moving on to the results, as the authors predicted, the factors of expertise and group goal connectedness combined to influence the popularity and inclusion of participants who varied in narcissism. Individuals high in narcissism who were perceived as having expertise in their job tasks were able to overcome the negative impact of their personalities on both inclusion and ostracism. As the authors put it, “For frontline workers, having a narcissistic personality may not be a burden” (p. 795).
How to Break Free from a Narcissist’s Powerful Grip
It is clear, then, that people high in narcissism can find ways to please and control others despite their tendency to be unbearable. As long as they have the skills that others want and need, they will climb any ladder that is placed in front of them.
When you think about your experience with your recent job promotion, you can now understand how the qualities that would normally lead to this person’s social isolation have made them invaluable to their organization. Indeed, when you also consider that teacher, isn’t your need to learn what he knows the driving force behind your willingness to tolerate his arrogance?
A social constructivist approach to personality, then, becomes useful not only as a theoretical model but also as a means of understanding some of the more puzzling features of narcissistic superiority. They are doing something right in terms of gaining expertise, but they are also able to exploit those skills in a way that creates a need for others to know what they know. Without that combination, as the Hong Kong study shows, the narcissist remains isolated and unloved.
In short, when it comes to dealing with a narcissist, these findings provide some answers as well as strategies. If you can take what you need from this individual’s toolkit without being exploited yourself, you can gain vital skills without being drawn into their obnoxious power games.
