Look at me - or else

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In a world where the public arena becomes more and more public with bigger and bigger audiences it should come as no great surprise if the whole show has a strong tendency to attract narcissists. As it always has of course, but maybe a bigger and brighter arena is attracting them much more strongly than in the comparatively recent past. Maybe it is also attracting them into more areas of public life than before simply because public life has become more public than it was.

Politics, major bureaucracies, major charities – they may all attract a damaging number of narcissists. It would be surprising to the point of unbelievable if they did not. As we found with Tony Blair who to this layman’s eye was certainly a narcissist.

When confronted with damaging narcissists in major league politics we have to point the finger at party selection but mainly at tribal voters. Unfortunately it may well suit a political party to foist an endless supply of engaging narcissists onto a bovine electorate too familiar with offering their applause to preening entertainers. In which case the electorate may need to smarten up because it is not necessarily easy to spot the malign narcissist as opposed to the narcissist with some genuine and useful leadership qualities.

How should voters assess candidates before voting for them?

If you want to find out whether someone is a narcissist, simply ask them:

Are you a “narcissist”?

This may seem counter-intuitive at first, and it certainly doesn’t always work to ask people directly about their personality traits, but the case of narcissism is unique. True narcissists do not appear to view their narcissism as a bad thing. In fact, they are likely to be proud of it! Indeed, a number of recent studies have shown that narcissists often admit that they behave in explicitly narcissistic ways, that they happily describe themselves as arrogant, braggy, etc., and even strive to be more narcissistic! Narcissists also appear aware that other people view them less positively than they view themselves, yet simply don’t care.

Oh dear – I can’t see that working with political candidates. May as well ask them – are you a devious, unreliable, self-centred bastard? Back to the drawing board.