Do Narcissists Overestimate How Much People Like Them?

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Narcissists tend to think rather highly of themselves, believing that they're special people who deserve to be admired by others. This could lead them to expect fawning reactions from other people, and to falsely assume that others are impressed. New research by Victoria Pringle and colleagues just published in Social Psychological and Personality Science tested how accurately narcissists perceive the impressions they make on others.

Narcissists work hard to maintain the positive views they have of themselves by achieving success in social domains. They tend to seek social status, try to be popular, and attempt to take on leadership roles. This suggests that the impressions they make on others are very important to them. But not all impressions are likely to matter equally. Narcissists are especially likely to see themselves positively in agentic domains. That is, they tend to see themselves as possessing traits such as intelligence, status, and extraversion. They tend not to see themselves especially positively on communal traits, such as being warm and caring. So, they should be particularly concerned with making a good impression on agentic traits, and be less concerned about communal traits.

Grandiose narcissism has different facets or components, which could affect how they feel they are perceived by others. Narcissism can be thought of as having two facets: Narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry. Narcissistic admiration involves seeking status and admiration and trying to charm and impress others. Narcissistic rivalry is more antagonistic and defensive and involves putting other people down in order to boost oneself up. Those high in grandiose narcissism tend to differ in the extent to which they possess the more antagonistic aspect of narcissism. Another way of thinking about the multi-faceted nature of narcissism is to divide it into three different components: Leadership/authority, grandiose exhibitionism, and entitlement/exploitativeness. Leadership/authority involves a desire to take charge and think one is a good leader. Grandiose exhibitionism involves wanting to be the center of attention and seeing oneself as superior to others. Entitlement/exploitativeness involves the belief that one deserves special treatment and a willingness to manipulate others for one's own gain. Generally, leadership and grandiosity are related to narcissistic admiration and entitlement to narcissistic rivalry.

In their research, Pringle and colleagues wanted to study both the kinds of impressions that narcissists make on others, as well as narcissists' "metaperceptions" of these impressions. Metaperceptions are what we think other people think about us, which may or may not be accurate.

Pringle and colleagues examined data from four different studies, in which participants reported their perceptions and metaperceptions. In three studies, the data came from participants' interactions with new acquaintances, and in the fourth study, the data were based on ratings from people who knew the participants well. The participants rated their metaperceptions on several traits (e.g., rate, on a scale, how outgoing they thought the other person would think they are). To measure the actual impressions the participants made on others, those they interacted with rated the participant on those same traits. The researchers also used a variety of different questionnaires to assess narcissism in order to determine how different facets of the trait related to these metaperceptions.

Their results showed that narcissists did not tend to overestimate how positively people saw them. There was no tendency for narcissists' metaperceptions to be consistently better than the impressions that they made. What the researchers did find was that people high in narcissistic admiration, leadership, and grandiosity tended to think they were viewed positively. This was especially true for agentic traits, like intelligence and extraversion. Those who were high in narcissistic rivalry or entitlement actually tended to assume that others saw them negatively on communal traits. Whether others viewed them positively or not, narcissists thought that others saw them in the ways that accord with their own narcissistic values: Agentic and successful socially, but not particularly warm or caring.

This research suggests that narcissists are not necessarily misperceiving the impressions others have of them. They may often make positive impressions because they work hard to be perceived as high-status and successful. In fact, other research shows that they do excel at making good first impressions, so this might explain why they don't overestimate how positively people view them — they simply work hard to be admired, and sometimes succeed.