Abstract
Grandiose narcissists typically pursue agentic goals, such as social status, competence, and autonomy. We argue that because high intelligence is a key asset for the attainment of such agentic goals, the concept of intelligence should play a prominent role in grandiose narcissists’ self-regulation and social behavior. We review the relevant literature and report evidence in support of this claim. Grandiose narcissists consider intelligence to be an important resource that leads to benefits across life domains, they tend to maintain and defend illusory positive intellectual self-views, and they are extremely motivated to appear intelligent to other people. Thus, even though grandiose narcissism is essentially unrelated to objectively assessed intelligence, intelligence nevertheless plays an important role in the way grandiose narcissists think, feel, and behave. We discuss potential implications for social relationships and point toward avenues for future research.
In one of his tweets, the current U.S. president Donald Trump wrote, “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it!” (Trump, 2013). This quote is an illustration par excellence of the narcissist’s attitude toward intelligence. The presumed narcissist (i.e., a person scoring high on the personality trait of narcissism) considers him- or herself to be highly intelligent, explicitly suggests that he or she is more intelligent than other people, and uses such phrases to belittle others, who are regarded as “losers.” All of these elements reflect the definition of grandiose narcissism, which includes among its key characteristics feelings of grandiosity, a sense of superiority, and disregard for other people (Campbell & Miller, 2011). Accumulating evidence has indicated that the example above is not a random statement but that, instead, the topic of intelligence is of special importance for many narcissists. In this article, we review the relevant literature and address the question of how narcissists’ preoccupation with the topic of intelligence might be explained and what consequences it is likely to have for their intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning.
Narcissism and the Need for Agentic Grandiosity
Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by egocentrism, pronounced feelings of importance and entitlement, and a lack of regard for other people (Campbell & Miller, 2011). In social-personality research, two major forms of narcissism are distinguished: a grandiose one that is characterized by self-enhancement, approach motivation, and boldness and a vulnerable one that is characterized by defensiveness, feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and negative affect (Krizan & Herlache, 2017). For the current review, we will focus on the first form, because the theoretical argument we will develop pertains only to grandiose narcissism.
Grandiose narcissists have a strong need to maintain a grandiose ego. They want to prove to themselves and others that they are highly agentic people, which means that they have the traits and skills that are necessary for getting ahead in the social world (Campbell & Foster, 2007). Because attaining a sense of agency is an important self-regulatory goal for them, grandiose narcissists are highly concerned with agentic attributes (e.g., dominance, competence), and they possess a plethora of intrapersonal (e.g., grandiose fantasies, inflated self-views) and interpersonal (e.g., self-promotion, game playing) regulation strategies and skills (e.g., self-confidence, charm) that help them maintain a grandiose ego with regard to these attributes. Previous research has shown that narcissists score high on agentic values (Kajonius, Persson, & Jonason, 2015), rate themselves high on agentic attributes (Campbell, Rudich, & Sedikides, 2002), and display positively biased self-perceptions in the agentic domains (Grijalva & Zhang, 2016). By contrast, they are not very concerned with communal attributes, such as helpfulness or trustworthiness. As we will outline in the following, intelligence is a prime example of an agentic attribute, and accordingly, it plays a major role in grandiose narcissists’ cognition, emotion, and behavior.
Intelligence as an Agentic Attribute
Agency is a broad term that includes the capacity to master challenges, to control one’s actions, and to stand out from the masses (Bakan, 1966). High intelligence is a very beneficial asset in this context. Virtually all human activities require cognitive processes, such as reasoning, storing information, or planning. High intelligence, which incorporates all of these processes, is thus a key resource that is linked to many positive life outcomes, such as high educational achievement, good work performance, and a high income (Gottfredson, 2002). In other words, high intelligence is beneficial for the attainment of agentic goals, such as achievement, social status, and autonomy.
Research on social perception buttresses the characterization of intelligence as an agentic attribute. Intelligence is a central concept in modern societies, regarded as a synonym for general self-efficacy (Howard & Cogswell, 2018). In fact, people stereotypically think about an intelligent person as having agentic personality traits, such as high extraversion (Mőttus, Allik, Konstabel, Kangro, & Pullmann, 2008). Furthermore, self-rated intelligence is positively associated with agentic constructs, such as a high sense of control, approach-oriented emotions (Zajenkowski & Gignac, 2018), and masculinity (Furnham, 2001). Finally, when laypersons rate different adjectives with respect to agency, intelligence is among the top-rated ones (Abele & Wojciszke, 2014). Thus, intelligence is a prime exemplar of an agentic construct and should therefore play a major role in the narcissistic way of thinking and feeling.
Narcissism and Objectively Assessed Intelligence
Before addressing the role of intelligence in determining narcissists’ cognition, emotion, and behavior, it is important to consider the relation between narcissism and objectively assessed intelligence. It is conceivable that the reason narcissists are preoccupied with the topic of intelligence is because they actually have a high IQ. It also seems possible that narcissists’ preoccupation with intelligence is a compensation for an objectively low IQ.
However, the empirical evidence suggests that there is no meaningful relation between narcissism and objectively assessed intelligence. In a meta-analysis, the mean correlation between grandiose narcissism and objectively assessed intelligence was not significantly different from zero (O’Boyle, Forsyth, Banks, & Story, 2013). Thus, if the concept of intelligence should turn out to play a major role in narcissists’ cognitive-emotional experience, this is not because they are any more (or less) intelligent than people lower in grandiose narcissism.
Narcissism and Intelligence-Related Cognitions, Emotions, and Behaviors
In the following, we will specify the role that the concept of intelligence plays in narcissists’ self-regulation and social behavior.
Self-perception
Grandiose narcissists have a pronounced tendency to maintain unrealistically positive self-views (Grijalva & Zhang, 2016). Because people generally self-enhance in domains that are central to their self-concept (Gebauer, Wagner, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2013), narcissists should possess unrealistically positive self-views with respect to intelligence. Among the personality correlates of self-rated intelligence, grandiose narcissism is indeed the strongest one (Howard & Cogswell, 2018). Given that grandiose narcissism is unrelated to objectively assessed intelligence and because narcissism is still linked to self-rated intelligence when objective intelligence has been controlled for (Gabriel, Critelli, & Ee, 1994; Zajenkowski, Czarna, Szymaniak, & Dufner, 2019), this means that grandiose narcissists possess unrealistically positive self-views with respect to intelligence. Narcissism is thus characterized by intellectual self-enhancement.
Well-being
Past research has indicated that intellectual self-enhancement often goes along with, and longitudinally predicts, adjustment benefits, such as high self-esteem and subjective well-being (Dufner et al., 2012; Dufner, Gebauer, Sedikides, & Denissen, 2019). Therefore, narcissists’ grandiose intellectual self-concepts potentially help them to reap such benefits. Studies have supported this view by indicating that intelligence-related beliefs are important for understanding the relation between grandiose narcissism and well-being. It has been shown that narcissists experience positive emotions and high life satisfaction as long as they manage to maintain positive views about their intelligence (Zajenkowski & Czarna, 2015). More generally, positive self-perceptions in terms of agency have been found to mediate a positive link between narcissism and high self-esteem (Brown, Freis, Carroll, & Arkin, 2016). Thus, maintaining a grandiose self-concept with respect to intelligence appears to be an important task for narcissists because such a self-concept is highly rewarding for them.
Vulnerability
Despite being grandiose, a narcissist’s ego is often simultaneously fragile and can be shaken by negative feedback (Geukes et al., 2017). In general, people respond with pronounced defensive reactions when negative feedback comes from content domains that are personally important (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). Thus, narcissists should show pronounced defensive reactions when their intelligence self-concept is threatened. Empirical studies have indicated that narcissists experience a pronounced decrease in self-esteem when they receive negative feedback on their IQ (Rhodewalt & Morf, 1998) and that they respond aggressively when their ability is called into question (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). This means that even though narcissists might base much of their grandiosity on their intellectual excellence, their intelligence self-concept is also one of their weak spots.
Self-presentation
Narcissists are highly motivated to impress other people, because obtaining external self-validation serves narcissists’ overarching goal of a grandiose self-view (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). If intelligence is indeed central to narcissists’ self-concept, they should be eager to make an impression of being smart and competent. Wallace, Ready, and Weitenhagen (2009) asked participants to work on unsolvable tasks that were framed as intelligence tests. When participants were told that by completing the tasks, they could garner considerable prestige and admiration, narcissistic participants were more persistent than participants lower in narcissism. These results imply that narcissists are motivated to prove their smartness to other people. Furthermore, in their everyday language, narcissists speak more about achievement-related content than people lower in narcissism (Holtzman, Tackman, Carey, & Brucks, 2019), which also hints that they are motivated to make a smart impression.
Social behavior
In a recent study, we examined how narcissists think about intelligence (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). Participants indicated the extent to which intelligence is beneficial for success in several life domains. It turned out that narcissists view intelligence as a crucial factor that determines success in various domains. Interestingly, they located intelligence primarily in the interpersonal context as a factor that influences popularity among peers, social status, and relationship satisfaction. Because interpersonal relations are perceived by grandiose narcissists as yet another competitive field in which they can win admiration, intelligence appears to be an important weapon that buys them benefits in the social world (Zajenkowski et al., 2019).
Implications, Caveats, and Future Directions
What are the social consequences of narcissists’ unrealistically positive intellectual self-views? Some of these consequences might be positive. Positive self-views in a given domain often lead to positive reputations in the same domain, even if these self-views are purely illusory (Dufner et al., 2019). Thus, because of their grandiose intellectual self-concept, narcissists might come across as intelligent, particularly in short-term acquaintance contexts where it is hard to judge objective intelligence accurately. This could be an advantage during job interviews or first dates, for example. Other consequences are presumably negative. Open displays of intellectual superiority (e.g., bragging or belittling other people) can turn people off (Hoorens, Pandelaere, Oldersma, & Sedikides, 2012), and people who self-enhance their agentic attributes are seen as cold and untrustworthy (Dufner et al., 2019). Thus, in longer acquaintance contexts and in interdependent social relationships, narcissists’ self-perceived grandiosity might lead to social problems. Future research should address these possibilities.
Past research has almost exclusively relied on grandiose narcissism, assessed as a unidimensional construct. Future studies might investigate how the two major subcomponents of grandiose narcissism (i.e., admiration and rivalry; Back et al., 2013) are related to the concept of intelligence. We consider it likely that narcissistic admiration, which is linked to a positive self-concept with respect to agency, predicts intellectual self-enhancement, whereas narcissistic rivalry, which is linked to defensiveness, predicts defensive reactions to intellectual ego threats. Furthermore, there are specific forms of narcissism that do not entail an explicit focus on agency—namely, vulnerable narcissism (Krizan & Herlache, 2017) and communal narcissism (Gebauer, Sedikides, Verplanken, & Maio, 2012)—which should therefore be less strongly associated with intelligence-related cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Initial evidence indicates that vulnerable narcissism is unrelated to both objectively measured and subjectively assessed intelligence, whereas it nevertheless goes along with high stress responses during IQ testing (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). There is no research linking communal narcissism with intelligence; however, this form of narcissism is defined in opposition to agentic narcissism (Gebauer et al., 2012). Specifically, communal narcissists base their exceptional self-importance on self-enhancing their communal attributes, such as helpfulness or morality. Because agentic attributes are generally much less important than communal ones for communal narcissists (Gebauer et al., 2012), intelligence is most likely not a central topic for them.
Even though past research has indicated that the concept of intelligence plays a major role in narcissists’ life, none of it has directly contrasted intelligence with other content domains. Thus, even though we can conclude that the construct of intelligence is important to grandiose narcissists, it is unclear whether it is more important than other attributes. For example, would negative feedback concerning intelligence have a stronger effect than negative feedback concerning other agentic attributes (e.g., assertiveness) or concerning communal attributes (e.g., kindness)? Because of narcissists’ focus on agency, intelligence should clearly be more important to them than communal attributes. It even seems likely that intelligence is more important to them than other agentic attributes. Because intelligence is widely viewed as a prototypical agentic characteristic (Abele & Wojciszke, 2014) and underlies other, more specific agentic skills, it should be among narcissists’ most valued attributes. To examine this hypothesis, researchers could, for example, test whether narcissists are willing to defend their positive reputation for intelligence even when doing so entails negative implications for their reputation with regard to other agentic attributes.
Finally, researchers should clarify the role of self-esteem, a personality trait also characterized by positive self-perception with regard to agency (Gebauer et al., 2013; Wojciszke, Baryla, Parzuchowski, Szymkow, & Abele, 2011) but conceptually different from grandiose narcissism (Brummelman, Thomaes, & Sedikides, 2016). According to our line of reasoning, narcissism is mainly a predictor of agentic self-perceptions. That is, narcissists use various strategies to convince themselves that they are high in agency. Self-esteem, in contrast, is considered primarily an outcome of agentic self-perceptions (Gebauer et al., 2013; Wojciszke et al., 2011). People feel good about themselves because they believe they possess agentic qualities. We have cited evidence above indicating that grandiose narcissism might increase self-views in terms of agency, which then in turn increase general self-esteem (Brown et al., 2016). Future research should test more directly which role self-perceived intelligence plays in connecting grandiose narcissism and general self-esteem.
Conclusion
Maintaining feelings of competence, autonomy, and control is an important goal for grandiose narcissists. Because intelligence is helpful for the attainment of these goals, it plays a significant role in the way narcissists’ think, feel, and behave. Narcissists consider intelligence to be an important asset that leads to benefits in the social world. They are highly motivated to maintain a grandiose self-view with regard to intelligence, which enables them to feel good; they defend this self-view against criticism and want to appear smart to other people. We hope that by taking narcissists’ preoccupation with the concept of intelligence into account, researchers, practitioners, and laypersons might be able to better understand why narcissistic bosses, ex-lovers, or presidents behave the way they do.
Recommended Reading
Abele, A. E., & Wojciszke, B. (Eds.). (2019). Agency and communion in social psychology. Abingdon, England: Routledge. A comprehensive, highly accessible overview of what is known about agency and communion in psychology.
Hermann, A. D., Brunnell, A. B., & Foster, J. D. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of trait narcissism: Key advances, research methods, and controversies. New York, NY: Springer. A handbook that covers recent advances in research on narcissism, including grandiose versus vulnerable narcissism.
Morf, C. C., & Rhodewalt, F. (2001). (See References). An influential model that casts narcissism as a self-regulatory process that strives toward the overarching goal of creating and maintaining a grandiose self.
Zajenkowski, M., Czarna, A. Z., Szymaniak, K., & Dufner, M. (2019). (See References). A representative empirical article presenting a comprehensive series of studies examining the association between narcissism and intelligence.
