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Narcissism and Motives to Pursue Status Through the Use of Dominance-Based Strategies, Prestige-Based Strategies, and Leadership-Based Strategies

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Abstract

The present research examined the associations that narcissistic personality features had with motives to pursue status through the use of dominance-based strategies, prestige-based strategies, and leadership-based strategies as well as whether these associations were mediated by either dangerous or competitive social worldviews. Across three studies (N = 2082), the assertive/extraverted and antagonistic/disagreeable aspects of narcissism had indirect associations with the motive to use dominance-based strategies through the competitive social worldview. However, the results for the antagonistic/disagreeable aspect of narcissism were more robust than those for the assertive/extraverted aspect of narcissism which were weakened when other aspects of narcissism were included in the same analysis. In contrast, the assertive/extraverted, vulnerable/neurotic, and communal aspects of narcissism were positively associated with the motive to pursue status through the use of prestige-based strategies but social worldviews did not consistently mediate these associations. These results suggest that these aspects of narcissism have divergent associations with motives to pursue status through the use of particular strategies and that the competitive social worldview may play a role in some—but not all—of these associations.

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Data availability

The data files for these studies are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/cw5rp.

Code Availability

The code for these studies is available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/cw5rp.

Notes

  1. We decided to adopt a mediational framework for our analyses even though they could have been framed as concerning confounding (see MacKinnon, Krull, & Lockwood, 2000, for a review). The most important conceptual difference between mediational and confounding analyses is that mediational analyses imply causal relationships among the variables, whereas confounding analyses do not imply these sorts of causal relationships. We relied exclusively on cross-sectional data for each of the present studies which prevented us from determining whether causal relationships existed among these variables. However, we decided to adopt a mediational framework for our analyses because our hypotheses were mediational in nature. That is, we thought that narcissistic personality features would contribute to the adoption of the competitive social worldview which, in turn, would play a role in activating the motivation to pursue status through the use of particular strategies. It is important to note that the actual computations involved in mediational analyses and confounding analyses are identical so the particular framing of these analyses would not have influenced the results that emerged from the present studies.

  2. Preliminary analyses for each study found that gender did not moderate the indirect associations that narcissistic personality features had with the motivation to use particular strategies to pursue status. Further, the inclusion of gender in these analyses did not significantly alter the results. As a consequence, we decided not to include gender in the final analyses nor do we discuss gender differences in the interest of parsimony.

  3. We had initially planned to report the results of each sample as separate studies rather than combining them into a single study. However, preliminary analyses revealed highly consistent results across the three samples (e.g., the antagonistic/disagreeable aspect of narcissism had a positive indirect association with the dominance-based motive through the competitive social worldview in each sample). As a result, we decided to present the results for the combined samples in the interest of parsimony.

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Funding

There was no external funding for the present research.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Virgil Zeigler-Hill conceptualized and designed the project, collected data for the project, analyzed and interpreted the data for the project, and wrote the manuscript. Destaney Sauls, Victoriano Ochoa, and Jessica Kopitz assisted with drafting the manuscript and adding specific content. Avi Besser assisted with conceptualizing and designing the project, collected data for the project, and provided feedback on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Virgil Zeigler-Hill.

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Ethics Approval

Ethical approval was provided by the Institutional Review Board at Oakland University for Study 1, Study 2 (samples A and B), and Study 3. Ethical approval for sample C in Study 2 was provided by the Institutional Review Board at Hadassah Academic College.

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All participants were adults and provided their consent to participate.

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Zeigler-Hill, V., Sauls, D., Ochoa, V. et al. Narcissism and Motives to Pursue Status Through the Use of Dominance-Based Strategies, Prestige-Based Strategies, and Leadership-Based Strategies. Evolutionary Psychological Science 7, 254–272 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-021-00278-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-021-00278-w

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