An Australian scientist has been awarded the prestigious* Ig Nobel Psychology Prize.
The belief that one is particularly intelligent is a well-established feature of grandiose narcissism; but the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prize in psychology dared to ask whether that belief is the chicken or the egg from which narcissism hatches.
It’s thinking like that which gets you honoured** at science’s (other) night of nights.
The Ig Nobels, awarded each year in September, honour the scientific achievements that make one laugh, and then think.
This year’s batch of worthy winners included the late Dr William B Bean, who published no less than six papers analysing the rate of growth of a single fingernail over 35 years; a team of researchers from Japan who painted cows to look like zebras in the hopes that they may avoid attacks from biting flies (it worked!); and European physicists whose discoveries will pave the way to smoother cacio e pepe pasta sauce.
Thrown in with this hallowed and worthy bunch was the University of Western Australia’s own Associate Professor Gilles Gignac, who was recognised for co-authoring a 2021 paper investigating the influence of IQ feedback on temporary state narcissism.
The research, published in Intelligence, concluded that IQ feedback may shape people’s beliefs about their intelligence and that lay concepts of intelligence may incorporate some narcissistic elements.
Previous studies have found that people who believe they are smart have higher well-being and better academic achievements, even when controlled for actual intelligence.
Narcissists, in particular, have been found to have what Professor Gignac’s paper called an “overestimation of intelligence”.
“… The literature, to date, has largely assumed that the flow of causation runs from narcissism to [self-assessed intelligence], rather than the other way around,” the paper said.
“As we document, next, it may be justifiably hypothesized that at least some of the effect may flow from [self-assessed intelligence] to narcissism.”
To interrogate this idea, Professor Gignac and a colleague in Poland analysed a sample of 364 Polish adults.
The participants completed several measures including demographics, a trait narcissism scale, a self-assessed intelligence indicator and an IQ test.
After the IQ test, participants were randomly told that they scored very high or very low on the IQ scale, regardless of their actual results.
All participants then repeated the self-assessed intelligence indicator and filled out a state narcissism indicator.
It was only after this that participants were debriefed and told that their IQ feedback was random.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the group who were told they received low IQ scores rated themselves as having lower self-assessed intelligence than the people who were told they received higher IQ scores.
Applied to real-life, the researchers said their findings had implications for how we understand the origins of narcissism.
“Cumulative evidence shows that parents play a substantial role in shaping their children’s level of narcissism,” the authors wrote.
“Individual differences in narcissism emerge around the age of 8, when children are able to form global views of themselves.
“Parents may cultivate narcissism in their children by overvaluing their accomplishments, that is, seeing and treating their children as more special and entitled than others.”
It is possible, they said, that a child frequently praised for his or her intelligence – especially undeservedly – might develop narcissism as a result.
*Prestigious in that not many people get it.
**It’s subjective.
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