HIGH POINT, N.C., May 12, 2015 – Research by Dr. Jana Spain, professor of psychology at High Point University, was selected for presentation at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference.
Her poster presentation, titled “The Enigmatic Narcissist: Examining the Factors that Affect the Accurate Judgment of Narcissism Variants,” explores the factors that impact how people make judgments about others’ personalities. This work is part of her ongoing research focused on the everyday manifestations of personality and the accuracy of personality judgments.
Spain gathered her research by asking participants and their friends to rate their narcissism through a questionnaire. The participants were also asked to describe themselves in an open-ended essay, which evaluated their language use. Her results showed that although friends were able to accurately judge the more outwardly visible, grandiose type of narcissism, they had a much more difficult time judging the more covert and less visible, vulnerable form. Additionally, although previous work had suggested that narcissists tend to use more first-person singular, negative emotion and sexual words, her results showed that narcissism ratings were only related to the grandiose narcissist’s tendency to use more first-person singular words in the essays.
“Knowing when we are more or less likely to form accurate impressions of others’ personalities is important for many daily life decisions, including who to hire, who to befriend, and who to avoid,” Spain says. “This study could help us understand why it is challenging to judge a difficult but consequential trait like narcissism, what cues show that someone is a narcissist, and how narcissists are perceived by others who know them well.”
Three HPU students, senior Michael Dudley and 2014 graduates Cameron Griffin and Katerina Andrews, worked on the larger research study that led to Spain’s poster presentation.