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PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Behavioral Processes Underlying the Decline of Narcissists’ Popularity
Over Time
Marius Leckelt, Albrecht C. P. Küfner, Steffen Nestler, and Mitja D. Back
University of Münster
Following a dual-pathway approach to the social consequences of grandiose narcissism, we investigated
the behavioral processes underlying (a) the decline of narcissists’ popularity in social groups over time
and (b) how this is differentially influenced by the 2 narcissism facets admiration and rivalry. In a
longitudinal laboratory study, participants (N⫽311) first provided narcissism self-reports using the
Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire, and
subsequently interacted with each other in small groups in weekly sessions over the course of 3 weeks.
All sessions were videotaped and trained raters coded participants’ behavior during the interactions.
Within the sessions participants provided mutual ratings on assertiveness, untrustworthiness, and lik-
ability. Results showed that (a) over time narcissists become less popular and (b) this is reflected in an
initially positive but decreasing effect of narcissistic admiration as well as an increasing negative effect
of narcissistic rivalry. As hypothesized, these patterns of results could be explained by means of 2
diverging behavioral pathways: The negative narcissistic pathway (i.e., arrogant–aggressive behavior and
being seen as untrustworthy) plays an increasing role and is triggered by narcissistic rivalry, whereas the
relevance of the positive narcissistic pathway (i.e., dominant– expressive behavior and being seen as
assertive) triggered by narcissistic admiration decreases over time. These findings underline the utility of
a behavioral pathway approach for disentangling the complex effects of personality on social outcomes.
Keywords: narcissism, popularity, behavioral processes, relationship development, interpersonal
perception
Throughout the life course, individuals repeatedly enter new
social contexts (e.g., meeting people at work, at school or univer-
sity, and in private life with whom they were not previously
acquainted) in which they are confronted with the complex task of
acquiring new social partners (e.g., friends, peers, coworkers,
romantic partners). Getting to know others is a fundamental part of
our daily lives and being liked by others in the early stages of the
“getting-acquainted-process” is a crucial factor in the successful
emergence of relationships: Positive evaluations by others facili-
tate the initiation of satisfying social interactions and are associ-
ated with positive interpersonal outcomes (e.g., being popular,
making friends, acquiring a high status; Human, Sandstrom,
Biesanz, & Dunn, 2013;Sunnafrank & Ramirez, 2004). One key
individual difference variable that has long been discussed as
influencing these early interpersonal dynamics is narcissism. Re-
search on narcissism’s role in the emergence of relationships has,
however, revealed an inconsistent pattern of results, ranging from
positive to negative effects of narcissism on popularity (Campbell
& Campbell, 2009;Küfner, Nestler, & Back, 2013).
Prior empirical work on the social consequences of narcissism has
rarely looked at the underlying processes that drive narcissism’s
diverging effects on social outcomes, including the behavioral and
perceptual mechanisms of how narcissism influences popularity.
Moreover, the temporal dynamics of these behavioral and perceptual
processes have yet to be systematically investigated. That is, it is to
date unclear which changes in behavior and/or impressions on others
lead to changes in narcissism’s influence on popularity during the
early phases of getting acquainted. In addition, it has not yet been
studied whether different facets of grandiose narcissism, such as
agentic and antagonistic facets, affect changes in popularity differ-
ently and, if so, how they do so.
In the present study, we systematically analyze the role of
narcissism in the emergence of popularity within new social
groups by applying a dual-pathway approach (Küfner et al., 2013)
to a rich longitudinal dataset that includes different measures of
narcissism, ratings of interpersonal perceptions, and observations
This article was published Online First July 20, 2015.
Marius Leckelt, Albrecht C. P. Küfner, Steffen Nestler, and Mitja D.
Back, Department of Psychology, University of Münster.
This research was supported by Grant BA 3731/6-1 of the German
Research Foundation (DFG).
We are grateful to Leonie Althaus, Anna Auth, Simon Breil, Kyra Elias,
Jasmina Eskic, Lea Sophie Fetköter, Francesca Froreich, Stella Grau, Marc
Grünberg, Lisa Höke, Astrid Janich, Carolin Landers, Simon Lintz, Jana
Mattern, Christian Pill, Theresa Pohl, Lisa Wierichs, and Christina Wöb-
kenberg for invaluable help with data collection and to Boris Egloff,
Katharina Geukes, Sarah Humberg, and Roos Hutteman for fruitful dis-
cussions on this research.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marius
Leckelt, Department of Psychology, University of Münster, Fliednerstr. 21,
48149 Münster, Germany. E-mail: marius.leckelt@wwu.de
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015, Vol. 109, No. 5, 856– 871
© 2015 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000057
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