Narcissism in College Students: How Narcissism Relates to Attributions for Test Performance
Files
Publication Date
Summer 2024
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Keywords
Narcissism; neuroticism; extraversion; antagonism; attribution
Description
Narcissism, as understood by scientists today, operates in three dimensions. People with high narcissistic neuroticism show lower self esteem and attribute their success more to outside factors (Rohmann et. al, 2019). People with narcissistic extraversion display high self esteem and regularly attribute their success to themselves (Scharbert et al., 2024). Those with high narcissistic antagonism will be more competitive and hostile when their self esteem is threatened (Kwiatkowska et al., 2019;Miller et. al, 2021). In this experimental study, we examined how narcissism influences students’ attributions for their test performance. Participants (n = 201) from Trinity University completed a narcissism questionnaire before taking a test in their preferred major. They then received false feedback telling them either that they performed in the 27th percentile or 82nd percentile. They were then asked how much they attributed their performance to prior knowledge (versus luck and test difficulty). Extraversion and antagonistic dimensions of narcissism did not relate to attributions. However, students higher in neurotic narcissism were more likely to attribute poor performance to their prior knowledge, whereas students lower in neurotic narcissism were more likely to attribute good performance to their prior knowledge (interaction p = 0.015). These results align with prior literature and future studies should review more in depth how different types of narcissism make it so a person may attribute it to other factors than themselves.
Disciplines
Higher Education | Other Psychology | School Psychology
Format
MOV
Medium
video
Size or Duration
18:49 Minutes
City
San Antonio
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
