Why Are Narcissists so Charming at First Sight? Decoding theNarcissism—Popularity Link at Zero Acquaintance

摘要

On the basis of a realistic behavioral approach, the authors showed that narcissists are popular at zeroacquaintance and aimed to explain why this is the case. In Study 1, a group of psychology freshmen (N =73) judged each other on the basis of brief self-introductions using a large round-robin design (2,628dyads). Three main findings were revealed: First, narcissism leads to popularity at first sight. Second, theaspects of narcissism that are most maladaptive in the long run (exploitativeness/entitlement) proved tobe most attractive at zero acquaintance. Third, an examination of observable verbal and nonverbalbehaviors as well as aspects of physical appearance provided an explanation for why narcissists are morepopular at first sight. Results were confirmed using judgments of uninvolved perceivers under 3 differentconditions for which the amount of available information was varied systematically: (a) full information(video and sound, Study 2), (b) nonverbal information only (video only, Study 3), or (c) physicalinformation only (still photograph of clothing, Study 4). These findings have important implications forunderstanding the inter- and intrapersonal dynamics of narcissism.