NARCISSISTS CAN’T CORRECT ERRORS SINCE 'THEY DON’T MAKE ANY,' SAYS US STUDY

A study conducted in Oregon, Chile and Singapore has shown that it is practically useless to correct narcissists when they make mistakes since they do not think they commit any and when they do, they simply would resort to projection and blame others for their errors, a study conducted by the Oregon State University-Cascades found out.

Published in Science Daily on July 22, 2020, the recent study undertaken by Satoris Howes of OSU-Cascades, Edgar E. Kausel at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Alexander T. Jackson at Middle Tennessee State University and Jochen Reb at Singapore Management University was also carried by the Journal of Management.

The study consisted of four variations on the same experiment with four different participant groups, including students, employees and managers with significant experience in hiring. One of the four was conducted in Chile with Spanish-speaking participants. Participants first took a test that ranked their narcissism by having them choose among pairs of statements ("I think I am a special person" versus "I am no better or worse than most people"). In the first of the four variations, they then read the qualifications of hypothetical job candidates and had to choose whom to hire. After choosing, they were given details about how this hypothetical employee fared in the job, and were assessed regarding the extent they engaged in "should counterfactual thinking" about whether they made the right decision.

The four variations employed different methods to analyze how counterfactual thinking was affected by hindsight bias, which is the tendency to exaggerate in hindsight what one actually knew in foresight. The researchers cite the example of President Donald Trump saying in 2004 that he "predicted the Iraq war better than anybody." The authors note that prior research has shown that hindsight bias is often reversed as a form of self-protection when a prediction proves to be inaccurate -- e.g., Trump saying in 2017 that "No one knew health care could be so complicated" after failing to put forth a successful alternative to the Affordable Care Act. In the OSU study, researchers found that when narcissists predicted an outcome correctly, they felt it was more foreseeable than non-narcissists did ("I knew it all along"); and when they predicted incorrectly, they felt the outcome was less foreseeable than non-narcissists did ("Nobody could have guessed.")

Either way, the narcissists didn't feel they needed to do something differently or engage in self-critical thinking that might have positive effects on future decisions. "They're falling prey to the hindsight bias, and they're not learning from it when they make mistakes. And when they get things right, they're still not learning," Howes said. Narcissists often rise in the ranks within organizations because they exude total confidence, take credit for the successes of others and deflect blame from themselves when something goes wrong, Howes said.