SFSU psychologists develop tool to assess narcissism in job candidates
Using this tool, organizations can prioritize finding the right candidates to maintain healthy work culture
It feels like narcissism is everywhere these days: politics, movies and TV, sports, social media. You might even see signs of it at work, where it can be particularly detrimental. Is it possible to keep a workplace free of destructive, manipulative egotists?
More and more organizations have come to San Francisco State University’s experts in organizational psychology asking for help doing just that. In response, University researchers developed a tool for job interviews to assess narcissistic grandiosity among potential job candidates. San Francisco State Psychology Professors Kevin Eschleman and Chris Wright and four student researchers led the project, published in the Journal of Personality Assessment.
“We focused on narcissism because it’s one of the most commonly talked about characteristics of people. Really, it represents a lot of things that can go bad in terms of a team,” Eschleman said. “But it’s a characteristic that is very attractive in the short-term. [Narcissists] often have tendencies to be very goal-oriented and are often very successful. There’s a lure to somebody who is high in narcissism.”
The tool developed by the SF State researchers — the Narcissism Interview Scale for Employment (NISE) — is a set of behavioral and situational questions that can be incorporated into a job interview. One question asks respondents to describe their approach to leading a team. Another asks how candidates would procced if they disagree with a plan that the rest of their team likes — and the project requires unanimous consent to move forward. Interviewers are trained to rate candidate responses, providing a more scientific and consistent way to evaluate a candidate’s propensity for narcissistic grandiosity.
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