Recent research on CEOs’ narcissism has mostly used unobtrusive measures, even though such measures have not been validated sufficiently. In two settings (Study 1 with 601 participants from various occupations and Study 2 with 97 managing directors), we analyze the construct validity of the commonly used narcissism index (NI). We find that the NI is only moderately correlated with the established and validated Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), which calls into question the convergent validity of the NI. We further alter the company’s financial performance in our simulation to test whether performance affects the NI. Results show that individuals have different levels of NI after a period with a high compared with a low financial performance. This casts doubt on previous findings in organizational research using the NI and other unobtrusive measures because it reverses the common assumption of cause and effect.

中文翻译：

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自恋的迹象？重新考虑广泛使用的措施

最近关于 CEO 自恋的研究大多使用了不引人注目的衡量标准，尽管这些衡量标准尚未得到充分验证。在两种情况下（研究 1 有来自不同职业的 601 名参与者，研究 2 有 97 名董事总经理），我们分析了常用自恋指数 (NI) 的结构效度。我们发现 NI 与已建立和验证的自恋人格量表 (NPI) 仅适度相关，这对 NI 的收敛效度提出了质疑。我们在模拟中进一步改变了公司的财务业绩，以测试业绩是否影响 NI。结果表明，在财务绩效高与财务绩效低的时期之后，个人具有不同水平的 NI。