Narcissism and Destructive Leadership: Meta-Analyses of Leaders and Followers

Abstract

The positive link between narcissism and destructive leadership has been suggested in both popular culture and academic research, but the direction and magnitude of this relationship has not yet been captured comprehensively. These meta-analyses estimated how two forms of narcissism—leader narcissism and follower narcissism—relate to the destructive leadership construct. They found that leader and follower narcissism are indeed positively related to destructive leadership (ρ = .44, k = 24, N = 5,498, 95% CI [.30, .58] and ρ = .13, k = 19, N = 6,563, 95% CI [.04, .22], respectively). There was evidence of biases such as halo error, as followers who rate their leaders' narcissism and their leader's destructive leadership report a stronger relationship than other rating-source-based correlations. Moderator analyses revealed some evidence for cultural moderation of the relationships, though the evidence was not robust given the relatively low power of this study. Gender was examined as an exploratory moderator, and results indicated having a lower proportion of males in independent study samples decreased the follower narcissism-destructive leadership correlation (Δ = –.17, 95% CI [–.22, –.12]), but not the leader narcissism-destructive leadership correlation (Δ = –.04, 95% CI = [–.08, .00]). Additionally, exploratory methodological moderators, such as type of narcissism measure and target of destructive leadership, significantly impacted the magnitude of the relationship between leader narcissism and destructive leadership.