
Narcissism and Creativity: Intriguing and Troubling Findings  - rblion
http://www.fastcompany.com/1701676/narcissism-and-creativity-intriguing-and-troubling-findings
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nhebb
This isn't anything you couldn't surmise after watching the first few seasons
of The Apprentice. I have a related theory, though.

I've worked with several arrogant people that took under-performing operations
and grew them into sizable profit centers. Their arrogance was an asset when
in a fast change atmosphere where bullheaded determination and over confidence
got things pushed through. They didn't always make the best decisions, but at
least they were capable of making timely ones - and bend the will of others.

Once the rapid growth and improvement period was over, though, they never
adjusted to sustaining mode. Their arrogance caused rifts in the
organizations. Two were eventually let go.

So my amateur management theory is that highly arrogant people may be great
for leading organizations in a period of rapid transition, but they are not
typically the best leaders for mature organizations.

~~~
dalore
So should Apple get rid of Steve?

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nhebb
No.:)

Of course, I was just making a general observation based on my experience, not
trying to proclaim some pseudo, social science law.

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petercooper
Their findings reflect my experiences well and don't strike me as surprising
or troublesome, just logical. As the article notes, narcissism is not an
entirely negative property. It brings some powerful intrinsic motivations to
the table that can turn into a full bodied, confident outcome but, as ever, a
team entirely built up of these types is as useful as getting 20 top authors
to write a novel together.

~~~
waynecolvin
It kinda reminds me of how a troll can stir up conversation on a quiet channel
sometimes.

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BrandonM
_I am not especially happy about the findings of this study, in part, because
even if these findings do generalize to the real world, narcissists do so much
damage that they still may not be worth the trouble._

What? Simply being a narcissist causes "much damage"? It sounds like this
article is coming from the POV of a manager having trouble controlling
employees with a not-low-enough self-worth.

The only troubling thing to me about the finding is this article summarizing
it. A good manager gets the most out of his employees by putting them in roles
that maximize their abilities and take into account their personal traits. A
bad manager uses scientific studies and best practice to make decisions, such
as begrudgingly justifying keeping certain people on the staff even though
they are unmanageable.

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sayemm
You can't maintain strong beliefs about the world unless you also maintain
strong beliefs about yourself.

Having conviction in your thinking goes hand-in-hand with some ego or self-
confidence. It's a great advantage to have, but also a potential weakness too.

This is why talented contrarian value investors like Buffett and Charlie
Munger share a similar style -- when they have a strong opinion on something
it's real hard to turn them back or convince them otherwise, so it's dangerous
for the few times that they're actually wrong. But they're also very aware of
this potential weakness in themselves (it's mentioned in Alice Schroeder's
biography) and they've turned out to be right far more often than they've been
wrong, so it works out.

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a-priori
There's no mention in this post about controlling for extraversion. A
narcissist is an extravert, almost by definition, and because of that the NPI
test they linked to contains many questions that really address extraversion
(e.g. 1, 6, 7, 10). So non-narcissistic extraverts would score higher than
introverts on that test.

When they say that the most productive group was half-narcissists, this also
means it was half-extraverts.

Extraverts, compared to introverts, would be better on average in both those
scenarios: at pitching ideas (appearing "more enthusiastic, witty, and
charming") and generating ideas in groups. Because of this, it's hard to say
what role narcissism played, separate from extraversion.

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terra_t
The person who succeeds best in our culture is the one with Narcissistic
Personality Disorder. NPD people are great at telling others what they want to
hear, and, unfortunately, that gets you further than any other skill.

If there's a reason that our civilization will go the way of the dinosaurs,
this may be it.

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jhrobert
I wonder what would have been the result of the same protocol using
liberal/conservative versus narcissist/non-narcissist

There is more than one way to be creative

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funthree
>In the first study, students were placed in pairs and asked to pitch an ideas
to their partner for a movie concept. The results: "the ideas impressed the
person evaluating the pitch roughly 50% more than did those from the least
narcissistic pitchers."

What?

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jshen
The ideas [from narcissists] impressed ...

