Narcissism Transition Model
Creators: name: Mercadante, Eric
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: Study Name: Narcissism Online Experiment 1) Have any data been collected for this study yet? a. No data have been collected b. Some data have been collected but not analyzed c. Some data have been collected and analyzed If (b) or (c), please explain briefly: We have run 42 participants so far while we worked on this pre-registration. 2) Hypothesis: What’s the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested? Do narcissists, compared with less narcissistic individuals, experience less positive reactions from others to their successes, which in turn results in less positive success experiences? We propose that narcissists perceive worse (less positive) social reactions to their successes (i.e., that they are not receiving the respect/admiration that they are due, that they are not being appropriately congratulated or appreciated by others, etc.) than less narcissistic individuals, which may lead them to experience more negative feelings after success compared with less narcissistic individuals. 3) Give a brief overview of the methods. Participants will be told that they are participating in a mock interview study where they will work with a partner. All participants will be told they have been assigned to be the “Interviewee” and their partner has been assigned to be the “Interviewer”. As the “Interviewee” they will complete personality measures and a reasoning task as the first part of the study, and they will be told the interviewer will learn common interview skills companies use to make hiring decisions during this time. Participants will then complete measures of narcissism and self-esteem at the trait level. They will then choose to complete one of three tasks: an anagram-solving task, the Remote Associations Test, or the Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices Test. Each of these tasks has an easy and a difficult version, and participants will be randomly assigned to either the easy or difficult version of the task they choose to complete. Afterwards, participants who completed the easy task will learn that they did quite well on the task and those that completed the difficult task will learn that they did poorly on the task. They will then have a 4-minute conversation about the task with a confederate (whom they believe to be the Interviewer they were paired with at the beginning of the study) who will act in one of two ways: aloof and uninterested in the participant, or warm and sociable. After this interaction, participants will complete measures of perceived prestige in the eyes of their partner, satisfaction with social reaction from their partner, loneliness felt as a response to their interaction, state-level narcissistic vulnerability, state-level authentic and hubristic pride, state-level shame, and state-level defensiveness. 4) Independent variables: Describe the conditions (for an experimental study) or predictor variables (for a correlational study). Independent variable 1 is participants’ trait levels of narcissism. This is a continuous variable which we will not manipulate that will be measured using the Leadership-Authority, Grandiose Exhibitionism, and Entitlement/Exploitativeness subscales of the NPI as articulated by Ackerman et al. (2011). This study employs a 2 (Success or Failure) x 2 (Aloof or Sociable Confederate): 1. In the Success condition, participants will complete the easy version of the task they choose. After the task, they will be told that they scored above the average score on the task and finished in the 86th percentile of performance on the task. • Specifically, 20% of the total questions on the task will be subtracted from the participant’s score and that difference will be labeled the average score on the task. For example, the anagram task has 40 total questions to solve, so if a participant in the Success condition correctly completed 20 questions, they would learn that the average score on the task is to correctly complete 12 questions, placing them above average. 2. In the Failure condition, participants will complete the difficult version of the task they choose. After the task, they will be told that they scored well below the average score on the task and finished in the 27th percentile of performance on the task. • Specifically, 20% of the total questions on the task will be added to the participant’s score and that sum will be labeled the average score on the task. For example, the anagram task has 40 total questions to solve, so if a participant in the Failure condition correctly completed 20 questions, they would learn that the average score on the task is to correctly complete 28 questions, placing them below average. 3. In the sociable confederate condition, the confederate will begin the chat portion by saying, “Hi! My name is Sam and I’m your partner. Can you tell me about your experience with the task you just did? ” The confederate will then use the following guidelines in the conversation with the participant: • If the participant provides their name, use it during the conversation. • Mirror how the participant talks (i.e., if they don’t capitalize the first word of their sentences, you shouldn’t either) • Respond quickly to the participant • Ask follow-up questions • Compliment them when appropriate, laugh at jokes, etc. 4. In the aloof confederate condition, the confederate will begin the chat portion by asking, “how was the task?”. The confederate will then use the following guidelines in the conversation with the participant: • Don’t use the participant’s name. • Don’t mirror how the participant talks, just stick with the style used for the first message above. • Count to 10 after each time the participant responds before you say anything. • Use very short responses, things like “ok”, “cool”, “nice”, etc. • If the participant stops responding, don’t restart the conversation. We will test the efficacy of the success and failure manipulation using the following items. Participants will respond to these items using a 5-point Likert scale from “Not at all” to “Extremely”. These items will be combined to index the success of the manipulation: i. How many of the questions on the test did you answer correctly? ii. What percentile did you score in? We will test the efficacy of the confederate manipulation using the following items. Participants will respond to these items using a 7-point Likert scale from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. These items will be combined to index the success of the manipulation: i. My partner responded to my messages quickly ii. My partner paid attention to me during our conversation. 5) Dependent variables: Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. The dependent variables in this study are as follows: • Narcissistic vulnerability, measured with the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS; Hendin &amp; Cheek, 1997) with the items adapted to reflect how they felt in the situation they described. o I feel entirely absorbed in thinking about my personal affairs, my health, my cares or my relations to others. o I feel that I have too much on my hands to worry about other people’s troubles. o If I was around other people right now, I would become self-conscious and feel that all of their eyes were upon me. o I feel wrapped up in my own interests and like I could forget the existence of others. o I would be secretly “put out” or annoyed if someone came to me with their troubles, asking me for my time and sympathy. o My feelings would be easily hurt by ridicule or the slighting remarks of others. o I would dislike sharing the credit of an achievement with others. o I feel temperamentally different from most people. o I likely would interpret the remarks of others in a personal way. o I would dislike being with a group unless I knew that I was appreciated by at least one of those present. • Perceived Prestige after Confederate Interaction (Cheng, Tracy, &amp; Henrich, 2010) o Adapted items for use in our study: • My partner respects and admires me. • My partner wants to be like me. • My partner expects me to be successful in the future • My partner did NOT value my opinion. • I am held in high esteem by my partner. • My unique talents and abilities are recognized by my partner. • I am considered an expert on some matters by my partner. • I feel like my partner would seek my advice on a variety of matters in the future. • My partner did NOT enjoy hanging out with me. • Satisfaction with social reaction: (Items created for this study) o I feel like I received the respect that I deserved from my partner. o I feel like my partner admired me as much as they should have. o I feel satisfied with how my partner treated me during our conversation. o I feel that my partner treated me worse than I deserved to be treated. (R) o I felt that I was treated unfairly by my partner during our conversation. (R) • Perceived Isolation o UCLA Loneliness Scale Short Form (ULS-8; Hays &amp; DiMatteo, 1987)  Adapted items for use in our study • As a result of my interaction with my partner, I feel... o That I lack companionship o That there is no one I could turn to o Like an outgoing person (R) o Left out o Isolated from others o Like I could find companionship if I wanted it (R) o Like the people around me are not with me. • Authentic and Hubristic Pride, measured with the Authentic and Hubristic Pride Scales (AHPS; Tracy &amp; Robins, 2007). • Shame, measured with the following 9 items (Weidman &amp; Tracy, in prep) o I feel  Doubtful of myself  Bad about myself  Helpless to change things  Inferior to others  Like a failure  Miserable  Useless  Worthless  Inept • Defensiveness, measured with the following 12 items (Adapted from Howell et al., 2017) o Whether I agree with what happened during this study or not, this experience resulted from something true about me. (R) o My experience in this study reflects something about my intelligence/reasoning skills. (R) o My experience in this study does not reflect anything about my intelligence/reasoning skills or anything else about me. o The experience I had in this study...  Is a valid reflection of my intelligence/reasoning skills. (R)  Doesn’t really reflect anything important.  Is a valid reflection of my intelligence/reasoning aptitude. (R)  Is meaningless. o The feedback I received in this study...  Was based on objective evaluations of me. (R)  Did not represent my true intelligence/reasoning abilities.  Was distorted.  Was exaggerated.  Was too extreme. • For exploratory purposes, we will assess feelings of success after the task and before chatting with the confederate. We will do so with the following three items: o How successful do you feel right now? o How proud are you of the score you received on the test? o Compared to your expectations before seeing your score, how did you perform? (scale points go from “Much worse than I expected to perform” to “Much better than I expected to perform”) 6) Mediator variables: Describe any variables you expect to mediate the relationship between your IV’s and DV. Specify how they will be measured. We explain the expected patterns of mediation in this study in our model described below in section 8. 7) Moderator variables: Describe any variables you expect to moderate the relationship between your IV’s and DV. Specify how they will be measured. Our primary hypothesis is that condition will moderate the effects we describe such that the effects hypothesized in our model emerge in the success/aloof confederate condition but not in the other conditions. Alternatively, another possibility is that our warm/sociable confederate may not fully satisfy narcissists’ needs for praise and admiration after successes given the limitations of an online instant message conversation. In this case, we would expect our hypothesized effects to emerge in both success conditions, but not in the two failure conditions. This hypothesis would be supported if narcissism moderated the relationship between condition and perceptions of the social reaction of the confederate (measured with prestige, satisfaction with social response, and perceived isolation variables) such that individuals low in narcissism perceive the warm confederate more positively than the aloof confederate, but individuals high in narcissism do not see as much of a difference between the two confederates. Another possibility is that the confederate condition may fully determine narcissists’ emotional reaction to the experiment. The actual success or failure experience may be irrelevant if narcissists are particularly sensitive to how they are being treated and do not care about the reasons underlying why others treat them a certain way. If so, then we would expect narcissists to react positively to the warm confederate and negatively to the aloof confederate in both the success and failure conditions. Therefore, we would expect our hypotheses to apply to both aloof confederate conditions and would not expect these effects in both warm confederate conditions. 8) Analyses: Describe what analyses (e.g., t-test, repeated-measures ANOVA) you will use to test your main hypotheses. The primary aim of this study is to test how the confederate’s behavior affects participants’ feelings of shame after successes. We predict that participants in the success/sociable confederate condition will feel significantly less shame than participants in the success/aloof confederate condition. We also predict that, in both of these conditions, shame will positively predict hubristic pride and defensiveness. We will use structural equation modelling to test our model in both conditions using the lavaan package in R. The model, as it will be tested, is represented by the following set of regression equations. The tilde (~) separates the response variables from the explanatory variables and can be read as “regressed onto”. Shame ~ Narcissism Hubristic Pride ~ Shame + Narcissism Defensiveness ~ Shame + Hubristic Pride + Narcissism In each equation, we include narcissism as a covariate to determine whether our hypothesized effects emerge directly from narcissism or, as we expect, are mediated (fully or partially) through the process we describe. Our predictions for the direction of the effects of each equation are as follows. We predict we will observe the following effects within the success/aloof confederate condition: • Narcissism will positively predict shame. • Shame will positively predict hubristic pride and this relationship will mediate a positive relationship between narcissism and hubristic pride. • Hubristic Pride will positively predict defensiveness and this relationship as well as the components of the model preceding it will mediate the positive relationship between narcissism and defensiveness. We will also run this model in the other three conditions, and we expect to see significant differences such that all of the relationships described above are significantly more positive in the success/aloof confederate condition than all other conditions. We will test for mediation by calculating indirect effects using path analysis in lavaan within each condition, and will compare indirect effects between conditions by examining whether the confidence intervals around the effect overlap. To determine model fit, we will use the chi-square test as well as examine indices of approximate fit: the CFI, RMSEA, and SRMR. We will consider the model well-fitting to the data if the CFI is above .95, the RMSEA is below .08, and the SRMR is below .06. 9) More analyses. Are there any secondary analyses you plan to conduct? (e.g., order or gender effects). If the model does not reach the standards of fit described above, we will look for model modifications using the modindices() function in the lavaan package in R. We will use the recommended modifications to modify our model in theoretically meaningful ways and report these modifications as exploratory. We will also examine this model with a new variable of narcissistic self-aggrandizement replacing narcissism. We will calculate narcissistic self-aggrandizement by removing shared variance between narcissism and self-esteem. We will also test whether narcissism moderates the efficacy of the confederate manipulations as described above under section 7. 10) Sample. Where and from whom will data be collected? How will you decide when to stop collecting data (e.g., target sample size based on power analysis, set amount of time)? If you plan to look at the data using sequential analysis, describe that here. Participants will be recruited from Prolific Academic. We conducted a power analysis based on the difference in the correlation between narcissism and shame for participants who scored one standard deviation above the mean on loneliness in the success condition in a previous study (N = 53; r = .495) and for those who scored one standard deviation below the mean on loneliness in the success condition in that same study (N = 47; r = -.02). This difference is an effect size of Cohen’s q = .56. We then took a conservative estimate of that effect size, q = .40, which resulted in a required sample size of 102 participants per group to achieve 80% power. After running 42 participants, we examined the exclusion criteria described below to determine what percentage of participants we should expect to exclude for final analyses. About 25% of participants failed at least one of the attention or manipulation check criteria described below and two participants reported suspicion about the experimental design, so we have a suspicion rate of about 5%. We took a conservative estimate of this suspicion rate (10%). Thus, we will run 625 participants so that if 35% must be excluded for suspicion and attention, we will have 408 participants per condition for our final analyses. 11) Exclusion criteria: Who will be excluded (e.g., outliers, participant who fail manipulation check, demographic exclusions)? We will include attention check items throughout the study and suspicion checks at the end of the study. Participants will be excluded from analyses for the following reasons: 1. If they fail any of the attention checks throughout the study. 2. If they indicate suspicion that their score on the reasoning task was not accurate. 3. If they indicate suspicion that their partner was not actually another participant in the study. 4. If they do not attempt the task (i.e., answer 0 questions). 5. If they score too well in the failure condition or too poorly in the success condition for our manipulations to make sense. a. I.e., adding 20% to their score in the failure condition would mean the average is over the total score (e.g., if a participant got over 32 questions correct on the failure-condition anagram task), or subtracting 20% of their score in the success condition would mean the average is below zero (e.g., if a participant got less than 8 questions correct in the success-condition anagram task). 6. If the participant sends less than 3 total messages during the chat with the confederate. 7. If they report their percentile score as over 10 points away from the percentile they were shown a. I.e., Participants will be excluded for reporting a percentile score of less than 76 or greater than 96 in the success condition, or less than 17 or greater than 37 in the failure condition. Pre-registration written by (initials): EJM Pre-registration reviewed by (initials): JLT