Personality predictors of social status attainment

Putting Oneself Ahead of the Group: The Liability of Narcissistic Leadership

Integrating insights from interdependence theory with the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept, we propose that a pivotal obstacle for narcissistic leaders is their inability to sustain benevolent perceptions over time. As people strive to interpret social behavior in terms of self- or other-interest, the narcissistic tendency of prioritizing self-interests over the collective may become apparent and eventually taint their reputation as a leader. We examined how interpersonal motive perceptions-based on attributions of self- and other-interest-would clarify the leadership paradox of narcissism. We tracked 472 participants in 119 teams across four time-points. Narcissistic rivalry (but not admiration) corresponded to increasingly negative leader effectiveness ratings. The extent to which individuals were perceived as self-maximizing and lacking concern for other interests was tightly connected to declines in leader effectiveness across time. Altogether, these results offer insight into how perceived interpersonal motives may explain the downfall of narcissistic leadership.

Power motives, personality correlates, and leadership outcomes: A person-centered approach

OBJECTIVE

We investigated how these motivations combined within individuals to form unique profiles, and how these different profiles relate to personality traits and team behaviors.

BACKGROUND

Dominance, prestige, and leadership motives each play a key role in shaping social success or failure in gaining social rank and influence.

METHOD

We used latent profile analysis across two samples (engineering student project teams, Nstudent = 1088; working adults, Nworker = 466) to identify profile configurations and how such profiles related to important outcomes.

RESULTS

We identified qualitatively distinct profiles: ultra-dominance profile (prominent dominance motive with high prestige and leadership motives); prestigious leadership profile (moderately high prestige and leadership motives, low dominance motive); and weak social power motive profile (low on all three motives). Individuals with the prestigious leadership profile were more likely to emerge as leaders, compared to those with a weak social power motive profile. People with an ultra-dominance profile scored higher on narcissism and tended to perceive themselves as leaders, despite not being deemed more leader-like by teammates.

CONCLUSION

Using a person-centered approach allowed us to identify three power motive profiles across independent samples and generate insights into how these profiles manifest different social behaviors and outcomes.

Differential Behavioral Pathways Linking Personality to Leadership Emergence and Effectiveness in Groups

This study integrates leadership process models with process models of personality and behavioral personality science to examine the behavioral-perceptual pathways that explain interpersonal personality traits' divergent relation to group leadership evaluations. We applied data from an online group interaction study (N = 364) alternately assigning participants as leaders conducting brief tasks. We used four variable types to build the pathways in multiple mediator models: (a) Self-reported personality traits, (b) video recordings of expressed interpersonal behaviors coded by 6 trained raters, (c) interpersonal impressions, and (d) mutual evaluations of leadership emergence/effectiveness. We find interpersonal big five traits to differently relate to the two leadership outcomes via the behavioral-perceptual pathways: Extraversion was more important to leadership emergence due to impressions of assertiveness evoked by task-focused behavior being strongly valued. Agreeableness/emotional stability were more important to leadership effectiveness due to impressions of trustworthiness/calmness evoked by member-focused/calm behavior being stronger valued.

Individual differences in dissimilation: Do some people make more distinctions among targets' personalities than others?

OBJECTIVE

People differ in how positively they tend to see others' traits, but people might also differ in how strongly they apply their perceptual styles. In two studies (Ns = 355, 303), the current research explores individual differences in how variable people's first impressions are across targets (i.e., within-person variability), how and why these differences emerge, and who varies more in their judgments of others.

METHOD

Participants described themselves on personality measures and rated 30 (Study 1) or 90 (Study 2) targets on Big Five traits.

RESULTS

Using the extended Social Relations Model (eSRM), results suggest that within-person variability in impressions is consistent across trait ratings. People lower in extraversion, narcissism and self-esteem tended to make distinctions across targets' Big Five traits that were more consistent with other perceivers (sensitivity). Furthermore, some people more than others tended to consistently make unique distinctions among targets (differentiation), and preliminary evidence suggests these people might be higher in social anxiety and lower in self-esteem and emotional stability.

CONCLUSION

Overall then, a more complete account of person perception should consider individual differences in how variable people's impressions are of others.

Dominance and Prestige as Self-Concept Facets

Two basic strategies can be applied to navigate hierarchies: (a) dominance, which involves the induction of fear, intimidation, or coercion to obtain status, or (b) prestige, which involves using one's skills, knowledge, or expertise to pursue status. In the present research, we refined the original dominance and prestige account and the respective self-report scale and conceptualized and assessed both variables as stable self-concept facets. By doing so, we extended the explanatory power of the model. Four studies (total N = 1,993) showed good psychometric properties for the newly developed dominance and prestige questionnaire (DPQ). Both dominance and prestige showed high temporal stability. In testing associations with 72 personality variables and 14 objective criteria, nomological and criterion validity were supported. For the first time, the concepts were shown to predict friendship satisfaction. Further, in testing a truth and bias model, we found high self-other agreement for both self-concept facets. Thus, self-perceptions of dominance and prestige proved to be stable, valid, accurate, and relevant in contexts beyond leadership. Future research concerning the self-perception of these concepts could test the relevance of dominance and prestige in additional spheres of life (e.g. families, academia).

Discovering trends of social interaction behavior over time: An introduction to relational event modeling : Trends of social interaction

Real-life social interactions occur in continuous time and are driven by complex mechanisms. Each interaction is not only affected by the characteristics of individuals or the environmental context but also by the history of interactions. The relational event framework provides a flexible approach to studying the mechanisms that drive how a sequence of social interactions evolves over time. This paper presents an introduction of this new statistical framework and two of its extensions for psychological researchers. The relational event framework is illustrated with an exemplary study on social interactions between freshmen students at the start of their new studies. We show how the framework can be used to study: (a) which predictors are important drivers of social interactions between freshmen students who start interacting at zero acquaintance; (b) how the effects of predictors change over time as acquaintance increases; and (c) the dynamics between the different settings in which students interact. Findings show that patterns of interaction developed early in the freshmen student network and remained relatively stable over time. Furthermore, clusters of interacting students formed quickly, and predominantly within a specific setting for interaction. Extraversion predicted rates of social interaction, and this effect was particularly pronounced on the weekends. These results illustrate how the relational event framework and its extensions can lead to new insights on social interactions and how they are affected both by the interacting individuals and the dynamic social environment.

Social hierarchies and social networks in humans

Across species, social hierarchies are often governed by dominance relations. In humans, where there are multiple culturally valued axes of distinction, social hierarchies can take a variety of forms and need not rest on dominance relations. Consequently, humans navigate multiple domains of status, i.e. relative standing. Importantly, while these hierarchies may be constructed from dyadic interactions, they are often more fundamentally guided by subjective peer evaluations and group perceptions. Researchers have typically focused on the distinct elements that shape individuals' relative standing, with some emphasizing individual-level attributes and others outlining emergent macro-level structural outcomes. Here, we synthesize work across the social sciences to suggest that the dynamic interplay between individual-level and meso-level properties of the social networks in which individuals are embedded are crucial for understanding the diverse processes of status differentiation across groups. More specifically, we observe that humans not only navigate multiple social hierarchies at any given time but also simultaneously operate within multiple, overlapping social networks. There are important dynamic feedbacks between social hierarchies and the characteristics of social networks, as the types of social relationships, their structural properties, and the relative position of individuals within them both influence and are influenced by status differentiation. This article is part of the theme issue 'The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies'.

Achieving status and reducing loneliness during the transition to college: The role of entitlement, intrasexual competitiveness, and dominance

Although many emerging adults struggle to gain status and develop social relationships, particularly during the college transition, it remains unclear whether certain personality traits facilitate this transition. Using a longitudinal design, we investigated whether status-related traits-namely, entitlement, intrasexual competitiveness, and dominance-related to the development of status in 91 first-year college students (M _age=18.15, SD=0.44) transitioning to a novel college environment. We also examined whether personality traits moderated the degree to which status related to loneliness. As hypothesized, only students high in intrasexual competitiveness experienced increases in subjective dorm status across the year. In addition, students exhibiting average or low entitlement experienced decreases in loneliness over time, whereas high entitlement was related to consistently low loneliness. Finally, higher subjective dorm status was related to lower loneliness only for less dominant students, as assessed by both self-ratings of trait dominance and raters' judgments of facial dominance from photographs. Using a real-world context of status development, these results suggest that personality traits may influence students' ability to experience higher status and modulate the relation between subjective status and loneliness.

Pathways From Narcissism to Leadership Emergence in Social Groups

Narcissists successfully emerge as leaders. However, the processes by which this occurs are mostly unknown. Following a dual-pathway approach and differentiating between agentic (narcissistic admiration) and antagonistic (narcissistic rivalry) narcissism, we investigated the behavioral processes underlying narcissists’ leadership emergence in social groups. We applied data from a multimethodological laboratory study ( N = 311) comprising three groups of variables: personality traits, expressed interaction behaviors, and interpersonal perceptions. Prior to the laboratory sessions, participants provided self-reported answers to various narcissism measures. Interpersonal perceptions were obtained from round-robin ratings after participants completed the Lost on the Moon task in small groups. Participants’ behaviors during the group discussion were videotaped and coded by trained raters. Results supported the notion of a pathway from agentic narcissism to leadership (measured as target effects of being seen as a leader) determined by narcissistic admiration, dominant-expressive behavior, and being seen as assertive. To clarify narcissism’s relationship to leadership emergence, the effects were (a) contrasted with narcissism’s effects on popularity and (b) set in relation to process pathways leading from intelligence and physical attractiveness to leadership. The findings underscore the benefits of a behavioral pathway approach for unravelling the impact of narcissism on leadership emergence.

The "Why" and "How" of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit

We propose a self-regulation model of grandiose narcissism. This model illustrates an interconnected set of processes through which narcissists (i.e., individuals with relatively high levels of grandiose narcissism) pursue social status in their moment-by-moment transactions with their environments. The model shows that narcissists select situations that afford status. Narcissists vigilantly attend to cues related to the status they and others have in these situations and, on the basis of these perceived cues, appraise whether they can elevate their status or reduce the status of others. Narcissists engage in self-promotion (admiration pathway) or other-derogation (rivalry pathway) in accordance with these appraisals. Each pathway has unique consequences for how narcissists are perceived by others, thus shaping their social status over time. The model demonstrates how narcissism manifests itself as a stable and consistent cluster of behaviors in pursuit of social status and how it develops and maintains itself over time. More broadly, the model might offer useful insights for future process models of other personality traits.

Drivers of desire for social rank

Why are humans so often obsessed with climbing social hierarchies and increasing their social rank? This question has fascinated psychologists for decades and, in this paper, we review recent research intended to answer five specific questions related to people's desire for high social rank: (1) why do people desire high social rank, (2) for whom is the desire for high social rank the strongest, (3) when (i.e., under which circumstances) is the desire for social rank the strongest, (4) what are the consequences of the desire for high social rank, and (5) when and why do people not desire to maximize their social rank? Finally, we offer future directions for research on drivers of desire for social rank.