How much do narcissists really like themselves? Using the bogus pipeline procedure to better understand the self-esteem of narcissists

Narcissism is considered to be a pathological form of self-love but the extent to which narcissists actually like themselves is unclear. The present study utilized the bogus pipeline technique in order to examine how narcissists actually feel about themselves. Participants were 71 women who completed measures of narcissism and self-esteem before responding to a self-esteem measure under either bogus pipeline or control conditions. Women with high levels of narcissism reported lower levels of self-esteem in the bogus pipeline condition than the control condition. This suggests that women with high levels of narcissism may not actually feel as good about themselves as they often claim.     

Explanation and categorization: How “why?” informs “what?”

Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that explanation and categorization are intimately related. This paper explores the hypothesis that explanations can help structure conceptual representations, and thereby influence the relative importance of features in categorization decisions. In particular, features may be differentially important depending on the role they play in explaining other features or aspects of category membership. Two experiments manipulate whether a feature is explained mechanistically, by appeal to proximate causes, or functionally, by appeal to a function or goal. Explanation type has a significant impact on the relative importance of features in subsequent categorization judgments, with functional explanations reversing previously documented effects of ‘causal status’. The findings suggest that a feature’s explanatory importance can impact categorization, and that explanatory relationships, in addition to causal relationships, are critical to understanding conceptual representation.     

Why do(n't) your partner's efforts at self-improvement make you happy? An implicit theories perspective

People often try to improve their interpersonal skills to satisfy romantic partners. However, when and why a partner appreciates these efforts is an important but underaddressed question. The present research explored how people's theories that interpersonal abilities are either fixed entities or can be changed incrementally affect their responses to relationship partner's efforts at self-improvement. Study 1 validated a new measure for these theories and showed that, compared to the former entity theorists, the latter incremental theorists were less likely to attribute recalled instances of partners' negative behaviors to dispositional causes and perceive these behaviors as fixed and stable. An experiment that induced these different implicit theories (Study 2) and a longitudinal study (Study 3) further demonstrated that perceptions of partners' self-improvement efforts led to greater increases in relationship security and quality among incremental than among entity theorists. How implicit theories may shape the interpersonal dynamics of self-improvement is discussed.     

Stalking the perfect measure of implicit self-esteem: the blind men and the elephant revisited?

Recent interest in the implicit self-esteem construct has led to the creation and use of several new assessment tools whose psychometric properties have not been fully explored. In this article, the authors investigated the reliability and validity of seven implicit self-esteem measures. The different implicit measures did not correlate with each other, and they correlated only weakly with measures of explicit self-esteem. Only some of the implicit measures demonstrated good test-retest reliabilities, and overall, the implicit measures were limited in their ability to predict our criterion variables. Finally, there was some evidence that implicit self-esteem measures are sensitive to context. The implications of these findings for the future of implicit self-esteem research are discussed.     

“How good are you in math?” The effect of gender stereotypes on students’ recollection of their school marks

Two studies examined the effect of gender stereotypes on students’ recollection of their school marks in stereotypically feminine (arts) and masculine (mathematics) domains. As predicted, the results of Study 1 indicated that the more students believed in gender stereotypes prior to recall, the more they biased their reported marks, compared to their actual marks, in a stereotype-consistent way (female students underestimated their marks in mathematics and male students underestimated their marks in arts). Study 2, in which the salience of gender stereotypes was manipulated prior to recall, yielded similar findings. The recall of school marks was more stereotype-consistent in a condition of high salience than in a condition of low salience of gender stereotypes. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Who do you think I think I am? Accuracy in perceptions of others’ self-esteem

This study was conducted to assess the accuracy of perceptions of others’ self-esteem and to examine the potential moderating variables of target gender, perceiver gender, and degree of acquaintance. Degree of acquaintance was the only hypothesized moderator reliably related to accuracy. An overall tendency to overestimate targets’ self-esteem was evinced, but was not related to any of the hypothesized moderators. The data suggested that perceivers are influenced by a false consensus effect when estimating others’ level of self-esteem, independent of their degree of acquaintance with targets. Implications of the findings and directions for future investigation are discussed.     

“Why didn’t you just ask?” Underestimating the discomfort of help-seeking

Across four studies we demonstrate that people in a position to provide help tend to underestimate the role that embarrassment plays in decisions about whether or not to ask for help. As a result, potential helpers may overestimate the likelihood that people will ask for help (Studies 1 and 2). Further, helpers may be less inclined to allocate resources to underutilized support programs than help-seekers because they are less likely to attribute low levels of use to help-seekers’ concerns with embarrassment (Study 3). Finally, helpers may misjudge the most effective means of encouraging help-seeking behavior - emphasizing the practical benefits of asking for help, rather than attempting to assuage help-seekers’ feelings of discomfort (Study 4).     

What do you think about ink? An examination of implicit and explicit attitudes toward tattooed individuals

Tattoos are increasing in popularity, yet minimal research has examined implicit attitudes or the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes toward tattooed individuals. Seventy-seven online participants (Mage = 36.09, 52% women, 78% white, 26% tattooed) completed measures assessing implicit and explicit attitudes toward tattooed individuals. Results revealed evidence of negative implicit attitudes, which were associated with less perceived warmth, competence, and negative explicit evaluations. However, implicit attitudes were not correlated with measures of disgust or social distance. In addition, age predicted implicit prejudice, but other individual difference measures—such as personal tattoo possession, political identity, and internal/external motivations to respond without prejudice—did not. These findings are discussed in terms of how attitudes toward tattooed individuals may be multifaceted, and research may benefit from measuring implicit and explicit attitudes.     

How do you fake a personality test? An investigation of cognitive models of impression-managed responding

Because faking poses a threat to the validity of personality measures, research has focused on ways of detecting faking, including the use of response times. However, the applicability and validity of these approaches are dependent upon the actual cognitive process underlying faking. This study tested three competing cognitive models in order to identify the process underlying faking and to determine whether response time patterns are a viable method of detecting faking. Specifically, we used a within-subjects manipulation of instructions (respond honestly, make a good impression, make a specific impression) to examine whether the distribution of response times across response scale options (e.g., disagree, agree) could be used to identify faking on the NEO PI-R. Our results suggest that individuals reference a schema of an ideal respondent when faking. As a result, response time patterns such as the well-known inverted-U cannot be used to identify faking.     

How satisfied are you with your job? Estimating the reliability of scores on a single‐item job satisfaction measure

Estimating the reliability of scores on single‐item measures can be difficult because commonly used internal consistency estimates of reliability cannot be calculated. When longitudinal data is available, statistical models can be used to decompose the variability in the latent variable at each wave into trait versus state variance. Then, reliability can be estimated as a ratio of the sum of the trait variance that is captured in repeated assessments over the total variance. The current study used latent trait‐state‐error models on a nine‐year longitudinal data (N = 5,003) to estimate the test–retest reliability of scores on a single‐item measure of job satisfaction. Results showed that job satisfaction scores were somewhat unreliable (r_xx = .49–.59) and amenable to change.     

“Are False Memories Permanent?”: An Investigation of the Long-Term Effects of Source Misattributions

With growing concerns over children's suggestibility and how it may impact their reliability as witnesses, there is increasing interest in determining the long-term effects of induced memories. The goal of the present research was to learn whether source misattributions found by Ceci, Huffman, Smith, and Loftus (1994) caused permanent memory alterations in the subjects tested. When 22 children from the original study were reinterviewed 2 years later, they recalled 77% of all true events. However, they only consented to 13% of all false events, compared to the 22% false consent rate (among the same subset of children) found by Ceci et al. (1994). Additionally, while children remained accurate in their recall of true events (they maintained assents 78% of the time), they “recanted” their earlier false consents 77% of the time, after the 2-year delay. Implications of these findings for child witnesses and the legal system are discussed.     

Who do you look like? Evidence of facial stereotypes for male names

The present research provides evidence that people use facial prototypes when they encounter different names. In Experiment 1, participants created face exemplars for fifteen common male names, subsets of which were endorsed as good examples by a second set of participants. These most typical faces were morphed to create face-name prototypes. In Experiment 2, participants matched one of the names to each of the prototype faces from Experiment 1. Participants’ matching choices showed convergence in naming the prototypes for many of the names. Experiment 3 utilized these same prototypes in a learning task designed to investigate if the face-name associations revealed in Experiment 2 impacted the learnability of the names. Participants learned face-name pairings that had a higher association (based on frequencies from Experiment 2) faster than pairings with a low association. Results suggest a more direct relationship between faces and names than has been previously proposed.     

What do Raven's Matrices measure? An analysis in terms of sex differences

Although it is sometimes claimed that Raven's Matrices provide an almost pure measure of g, there is evidence that the easier items in the Standard Progressive Matrices and in Set I of the Advanced Matrices measure a perceptual or Gestalt factor distinct from the more analytic items in the rest of the tests. There is also, however, both factor analytic and experimental evidence that these analytic items fall into two partially separate groups, distinguishable by the type of rule needed for their solution in the analysis proposed by Carpenter, Just, and Schell (1990) [Carpenter, P. A., Just, M. A., Schell, P. (1990). What one intelligence test measures: A theoretical account of the processing in the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. Psychological Review, 97, 404–431]. Re-analysis of published data suggests a new source of evidence for this further distinction: males do better than females on items requiring an addition/subtraction or distribution of two rule, but there is no sex difference on items requiring pairwise progression or distribution of three rules. A specially designed experiment confirmed this pattern of results.     

How much weight do organizational personality inferences have on judgments of organizations?

Organizational personality inferences are the human-like attributes individuals ascribe to organizations. Extant research has shown that individuals reliably distinguish organizations on these traits and these inferences influence individuals’ judgments of organizations. Theory of Symbolic Attraction posits that the importance given to organizational personality when forming judgments depends on the needs of the person. This policy capturing study investigated how much weight individuals give to each personality factor when forming organizational judgments and tested propositions that social identity concerns moderate the weight given. Results were also compared to the aggregated effects from extant research. Organizational personality inferences directly affected organizational judgments, some of these effects were moderated by social identity concerns, and the pattern of results were different than past research.     

“Mother nature doesn’t have a bullet with your name on it”: Coding with reference to one’s name or object location?

When movements of a joystick toward/away from the self are made in response to positive/negative words, performance is better with the positive-toward/negative-away mapping than with the alternative mapping, consistent with an approach-avoidance motivational account. Markman and Brendl (2005) instructed participants to move a positive or negative word toward or away from their name, located on a bar at the center of a three-dimensional display. The positive-toward/negative-away mapping relative to the name’s location was preferred, which means that relative to the body the preferred mapping reversed to positive-away/negative-toward when the word was in front of the name. This finding was interpreted as demonstrating that “the compatibility effect depends on people’s representation of their selves in space rather than on their physical location” (p. 6). Alternatively, this effect may arise from the bar providing a salient referent object for coding relative location. We report an experiment that replicates these findings but shows similar results when there is no name on the bar and/or no three-dimensional perspective. An account in terms of action effects involving implied movement of the word toward or away from a referent object rather than a representation of self provides the simplest explanation of the compatibility effect.     

Objective assessments of quality of life: How much do they agree with each other?

Information was collected on 14 objective measures of service quality in 15 staffed houses for people with learning disabilities. Measures or dimensions of the measures were grouped under six headings: (1) quality of housing; (2) social and community integration; (3) social interactions; (4) development; (5) activity; and (6) autonomy and choice. Rank order correlation coefficients were calculated to explore the extent to which different quality assessments within each category agreed. Overall, there was a reassuring level of agreement. Some of the lack of agreement found could be attributed to the fact that, even though addressing the same general area, measures were focused on subtly different facets of the phenomenon under study. Other disagreement seemed to stem from the interaction between the nature of the information and the process for obtaining it. Comparisons between measures which required staff to give an opinion about how the setting was organized, and those which either required staff to comment on resident activity or employed independent observation, tended to disagree. The study illustrates that the basis for translating a multidimensional definition of quality into measurable terms is developing. Further research to examine the interrelationship between measurement approaches is warranted.     

How smart do you think you are? A meta-analysis on the validity of self-estimates of cognitive ability

Individuals' perceptions of their own level of cognitive ability are expressed through self-estimates. They play an important role in a person's self-concept because they facilitate an understanding of how one's own abilities relate to those of others. People evaluate their own and other persons' abilities all the time, but self-estimates are also used in formal settings, such as, for instance, career counseling. We examine the relationship between self-estimated and psychometrically measured cognitive ability by conducting a random-effects, multilevel meta-analysis including a total of 154 effect sizes reported in 41 published studies. Moderator variables are specified in a mixed-effects model both at the level of the individual effect size and at the study level. The overall relationship is estimated at r = .33. There is significant heterogeneity at both levels (i.e., the true effect sizes vary within and between studies), and the results of the moderator analysis show that the validity of self-estimates is especially enhanced when relative scales with clearly specified comparison groups are used and when numerical ability is assessed rather than general cognitive ability. The assessment of less frequently considered dimensions of cognitive ability (e.g., reasoning speed) significantly decreases the magnitude of the relationship. From a theoretical perspective, Festinger's (1954) theory of social comparison and Lecky's (1945) theory of self-consistency receive empirical support. For practitioners, the assessment of self-estimates appears to provide diagnostic information about a person's self-concept that goes beyond a simple "test-and-tell" approach. This information is potentially relevant for career counselors, personnel recruiters, and teachers.