Is Narcissism Good for Business?

Narcissists, new experiments show, are great at convincing others that their ideas are creative even though they're just average. Still, groups with a handful of narcissists come up with better ideas than those with none, suggesting that self-love contributes to real-world success. Narcissism and creativity seem to go hand in hand. Creative people often appear self-important, hungry for attention, and unconcerned with others' ideas and opinions— all traits narcissists share. Think of Pablo Picasso, famous for his iconoclastic paintings but infamous for declaring, "I am God." Like Picasso, narcissists often rise to positions of importance in art, business, and other endeavors, suggesting that they have ability and ideas that others do not. But do they really? 

To find out if narcissism might still be a boon to businesses, psychologists Jack Goncalo and Sharon Kim of Cornell University and Francis Flynn of Stanford University divided 292 other students into teams of four and asked them to draw up proposals to improve the performance of real businesses and other organizations. Teams made up of three or four narcissists came up with incremental proposals and failed to generate and discuss many ideas, but so did teams with no narcissists. The teams that generated the most ideas were half narcissist, the researchers will report this November in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Goncalo says he's not sure why this particular group makeup generates the most ideas, but it could be because narcissists can help get ideas on the table. If there are too many of them, however, there may be too many egos in the room, preventing anything from getting done. 

  

The research "addresses a very important topic in a clever and sound way," writes psychologist W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, Athens in an e-mail. Ideally, he says, businesses could focus on the narcissistic traits that work and leave the less desirable traits behind. Self-promotion, for example, is a valuable skill, but it benefits everyone to realize how much it can distort perceptions of quality. 

Source: www.sciencemag.org 

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