Narcissism and self-estimated intelligence: New insights from multidimensional assessments

Abstract

Overconfidence and exaggerated evaluation of one's own abilities have been tagged to narcissistic personalities. Notably, prior research related narcissistic traits only with self-estimates of general IQ, although contemporary narcissism models offer the potential to test more specific hypotheses, for instance at the level of multiple abilities. Therefore, we examined associations between agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism and self-estimated intelligence not only at the level of general IQ, but also at the level of facets: verbal, mathematical-logical, personal, and artistic abilities. Correlation and multiple regression analyses in 264 individuals (53 % female) consistently revealed positive relationships between agentic narcissism and the different measures of SEI. Antagonistic and neurotic narcissism were unrelated to self-estimates of general IQ, verbal, mathematical-logical, and artistic abilities, but linked with lower self-estimated personal ability. Moreover, independent effects of gender emerged. The study illustrates that the relationship between narcissism and SEI goes beyond the obvious, but overly simplistic tag of ‘narcissistic self-enhancement’. Future studies could implement even finer grained assessments of different ability domains and address developmental trajectories of self-estimation bias and its relationship to narcissistic traits.