Which leadership style do more narcissistic subordinates prefer in supervisors?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Subordinates in Western cultures generally prefer supervisors with a democratic rather than autocratic leadership style. It is unclear, however, whether more narcissistic subordinates share or challenge this prodemocratic default attitude. On the one hand, more narcissistic individuals strive for power and thus may favor a democratic supervisor, who grants them power through participation. On the other hand, similarity attracts and, thus, more narcissistic subordinates may favor an autocratic supervisor, who exhibits the same leadership style that they would adopt in a leadership position. METHOD: Four studies (Ntotal = 1284) tested these competing hypotheses with two narcissism dimensions: admiration and rivalry. Participants indicated the leadership style they generally prefer in a supervisor (Study 1), rated their own supervisor's leadership style (Study 2a: individual ratings; Study 2b: team ratings), and evaluated profiles of democratic and autocratic supervisors (Study 3). RESULTS: We found a significantly weaker prodemocratic default attitude among more narcissistic subordinates: Subordinates' narcissism was negatively related to endorsement of democratic supervisors and positively related to endorsement of autocratic supervisors. Those relations were mostly driven by narcissistic rivalry rather than narcissistic admiration. CONCLUSION: The results help clarify the narcissistic personality and, in particular, how more narcissistic subordinates prefer to be led.

When and Why Being Ostracized Affects Veracity Judgments.

Ostracism-being ignored and excluded by others-is a ubiquitous experience with adverse effects on well-being. To prevent further exclusion and regain belonging, ostracized individuals are well advised to identify affiliation partners who are sincerely well-disposed. Humans' ability to detect lies, however, is generally not very high. Yet, veracity judgments can become more accurate with decreasing reliance on common stereotypic beliefs about the nonverbal behavior of liars and truth-tellers. We hypothesize that ostracized (vs. included) individuals base their veracity judgments less on such stereotypical nonverbal cues if message content is affiliation-relevant. In line with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 shows that ostracized (vs. included) individuals are better at discriminating affiliation-relevant lies from truths. Experiments 2 and 3 further show that ostracized (vs. included) individuals base their veracity judgments less on stereotypical nonverbal cues if messages are of high (but not low) affiliation relevance.

Agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and prosociality.

Grandiose narcissism and prosociality are important topics in personality and social psychology, but research on their interplay is lacking. We present a first large-scale, systematic, and multimethod investigation linking the two. In 2 studies (N1 = 688, N2 = 336), we assessed grandiose narcissism comprehensively (i.e., agentic and communal narcissism) and examined its relations with instantiations of prosociality, namely, objective prosociality (actual behavior in Study 1; round-robin informant-reports in a real-life setting in Study 2) and subjective prosociality (self-perceptions in Studies 1 and 2). We obtained a consistent set of results. Agentic narcissism was related to lower objective prosociality and lower subjective prosociality. Communal narcissism, by contrast, was unrelated to objective prosociality, but was related to higher subjective prosociality. Additionally, we tested for prosociality self-enhancement among agentic and communal narcissists. Agentic narcissists evinced the same (and modest) level of prosociality self-enhancement as their non-narcissistic counterparts. Communal narcissists, by contrast, evinced substantial levels of prosociality self-enhancement, whereas their non-narcissistic counterparts did not enhance their prosociality at all. We discuss implications of the findings for the literature on narcissism and antisociality, and for the concept of prosocial personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Spatial Power Motivation Scale: a semi-implicit measure of situational power motivation.

We introduce a new nonverbal and unobtrusive measure to assess power motive activation, the Spatial Power Motivation Scale (SPMS). The unique features of this instrument are that it is (a) very simple and economical, (b) reliable and valid, and (c) sensitive to situational changes. Study 1 demonstrates the instrument's convergent and discriminant validity with explicit measures. Study 2 demonstrates the instrument's responsiveness to situational power motive salience: anticipating and winning competition versus losing competition and watching television. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that thoughts of competition result in higher power motivation specifically for individuals with a high dispositional power motive.

When autocratic leaders become an option--uncertainty and self-esteem predict implicit leadership preferences.

We investigated the impact of uncertainty on leadership preferences and propose that the conjunction of self-esteem level and stability is an important moderator in this regard. Self-threatening uncertainty is aversive and activates the motivation to regain control. People with high and stable self-esteem should be confident of achieving this goal by self-determined amelioration of the situation and should therefore show a stronger preference for democratic leadership under conditions of uncertainty. By contrast, people with low and unstable self-esteem should place their trust and hope in the abilities of powerful others, resulting in a preference for autocratic leadership. Studies 1a and 1b validate explicit and implicit leadership measures and demonstrate a general prodemocratic default attitude under conditions of certainty. Studies 2 and 3 reveal a democratic reaction for individuals with stable high self-esteem and a submissive reaction for individuals with unstable low self-esteem under conditions of uncertainty. In Study 4, this pattern is cancelled out when individuals evaluate leadership styles from a leader instead of a follower perspective.

Mechanisms underlying heightened risk taking in adolescents as compared with adults.

Self-report surveys and behavioral tasks indicate greater risk-taking behavior in adolescents as compared with adults. However, the underlying causes of these behavioral differences remain unclear. The present study examined the possibility that adolescents may be more susceptible to immediate positive and negative outcomes than adults. We compared the behavior of adolescents and adults on a modified version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Lejuez et al., 2002). The task required that participants press a button to "inflate" a series of balloons on a computer screen. Balloons inflated until either the participant released the button ("saved" balloons) or the balloon "burst." Accumulated points increased as the duration of the buttonpress increased; however, simultaneously, the likelihood that the balloon would burst also increased. Adolescents inflated balloons to a larger size prior to saving them than adults did, suggesting relatively higher levels of risk taking, although the adolescents' behavior was not uniformly risk prone. Further, in comparison with adults, behavior in adolescents was more influenced by whether a balloon was saved or had burst on the preceding trial, suggesting that sensitivity to immediate consequences is one mechanism that underlies the observed difference in risk taking.