Narcissism and Job Outcomes In East Asia and The United States

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Keywords: Narcissism; Job satisfaction

Abstract: How individuals high in narcissism fare across cultures is a critical question in business and psychology. Conventional wisdom suggests that such individuals would fare poorly in collectivistic cultures such as those found in East Asia. However, the reverse argument could be made, which is that narcissism could confer a potential advantage to workers in such environments because of their tendency to stand out. Study 1 examined the Dark Triad, Big Five, and work outcomes such as income, rank, and satisfaction in large sample of Japanese workers living in Japan (n = 8,313). The results demonstrated that narcissism had a small and positive association with job satisfaction, income, and rank. Study 2 (n = 430) tested how generalizable this finding was in a sample of individuals of East Asian vs. European heritage, who were living in the United States (US). We found that narcissism conferred an advantage (salary, rank, income) to those of European decent living in the US, but not those who were East Asian. Thus, we found that narcissism had no advantage or disadvantage for East Asians living in the United States. In sum, the findings suggest that narcissism has a differential impact on workplace outcomes across cultures.