Our postmodern civilization, it is bone-toned and politically correct to suggest that women are angelic, blemishless, flawless, and all good, while men are vile, evil, wicked, bad, generally obnoxious.
This is called splitting.
It’s a pathological primitive infantile defense mechanism, but I will not go into it.
One of the latest entries in this feminist genre of women are all good, men are all bad, or toxic, is the topic of today’s video.
But it does dwell on a fact.
And the fact is that narcissistic women, women who are narcissists, are far more likely to be pro-social and communal than narcissistic men who are far more likely to be individualistic or malignantly individualistic.
That is a well-established fact.
Now, before I proceed, half of all narcissists nowadays are women.
Only 40 years ago, the ratio has been 75% men, 25% women.
Today it’s half enough, and women are catching up in the psychopathy grand tournament.
More and more women are becoming psychopaths.
Today we are about to witness equality and equity in this field as well.
Okay, as promised, let’s have a look at the latest.
Finance Research Letters, Volume 64, June 2024.
The title of the article, Female Chief Executive Officer, CEOs, with a squeeze of narcissism, a perfect cocktail for corporate performance, question mark.
The authors are Tom Arbo, Sara Khodzal, or No.
The highlights of the article are, number one, chief executive officer narcissism is not associated with inferior or superior corporate performance, contrary to myths propagated even by scholars.
They do know, however, that narcissism and psychopathy are overrepresented among chief executive officers.
These are the studies of Robert Heyer, Baby Akanovas.
Okay, the next highlight, gender moderates the association between chief executive officer narcissism and corporate performance.
Number three, narcissistic female chief executive officers outperform their male peers.
Number five, the findings are important for female chief executive officers selection and management.
In other words, make sure your chief executive officer is a female, not a male.
Okay, this piece of propaganda aside, let’s delve deeper into this fascinating, otherwise, now we know, as I said, that narcissism is prevalent in the upper echelons, overrepresented in middle and upper management.
And we also know from previous studies that there is a correlation or some connection between corporate outcomes and chief executive officer narcissism, not corporate performance in a significant and robust way, but certain outcomes, for example, digital transformation of the enterprise is much more likely under a narcissistic chief financial officer.
I’m going to mention it at the end of the video.
Anyhow, narcissism seems to be performance enhancing in some contexts.
And now this article introduces gender into the equation.
It seems that the performance of narcissistic women is superior to the performance of not only healthy non-narcissistic women, but also superior to the performance of narcissistic men.
Female chief executive officers are unique, both their nurture, also known as the double bind and nature, evolutionary traits and so on and so forth.
Women are not men.
That’s, I think, an indisputable fact.
And so women are able to leverage some feminine traits and behaviors, meld them or conflate them with narcissism in order to yield favorable outcomes.
Women, as the article says, exploit the bright sides of narcissism while moderating its dark sides.
Now, the results in the article, in the study, are fascinating.
The authors found that narcissistic female chief executive officers beat their male peers in terms of corporate performance.
And we didn’t find these effects.
This article in previous studies did not find the same effects among male narcissists, probably because male narcissists are a lot more individualistic and unable to leverage traits such as empathy, even dark, even cold empathy, and networking.
So the researchers are from Aarhus University in Denmark, my favorite country, by the way.
They examined the personality traits of chief executives.
And they found that a higher level of narcissism in women chief executive officers is associated with improved company performance.
And again, they didn’t find it among men.
They said, we find that narcissistic female chief executive officers beat their male peers in terms of corporate performance.
So many chief executive officers in the biggest companies have been women, actually.
Contrary to prevalent myths online and feminist propaganda, there have been many women chief executive officers, although the vast majority of CEOs are still men.
And so there’s already a representative sample of female chief executive officers, their performance, secrets of success, reasons for failure, and so on and so forth.
And what this study claims is that the best predictor of success among female chief executive officers is hold your breath narcissism.
Narcissism is performance enhancing, therefore.
Now we are talking about a highly specific type of narcissism known as prosocial or communal narcissism.
I encourage you to watch videos on my channel with regards to this subtype of narcissists.
Women are more prosocial and more communal than men.
So women appear to be impressive leaders and are able to hold back their narcissism.
They don’t exploit other people.
They don’t abuse other people.
I mean, within the corporate setting.
Or let us put it this way.
The main instruments at the disposal of narcissistic chief executive officers who are women, the main instruments are not fear, ambition, abuse, traumatizing behaviors, bullying, and so on and so forth, and exploitation.
While men engage in these behaviors, they’re exploitative, they’re bullying, they’re dysempathic and so on.
Women, even though they are narcissists, suppress these aspects of narcissism.
Dr. Tom Arbo explained that narcissism has three facets.
Grandiose exhibitionism, which comprises vanity, self-absorption, and superiority.
The second component is leadership authority, the bright side, encompassing the desire to lead an aspiration for power and a belief in one’s power to influence.
And finally, there’s a dark side.
And the dark side is EE, exploitativeness and entitlement.
And so Dr. Arbo says the EE facet, exploitativeness and entitlement, is the most disturbing facet as it is linked to aggression, counterproductive work behavior, and a reluctance to forgive, holding grudges.
The EE facet is generally related to the dark triad personality, including impulsive antisociality and Machiavellianism.
The ICD-11 calls it “desociality.” Anyhow, what is interesting in our case, says the author of the study, what is interesting is that other studies have shown the EE facet displays the largest gender difference.
As I mentioned earlier, women tend to be more agreeable than men.
And higher agreeableness is also the case when comparing female and male executives.
The researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark examined the personality traits of chief executives.
And they found that a higher level of narcissism in female chief executive offices is associated with improved company performance via these dimensions of narcissism by suppressing the dark side of narcissism and enhancing the bright side, for example, leadership, self-confidence, and so on.
The study design, though, was not able to separate the three sides of narcissism in the individual participants.
So it’s likely that the higher agreeableness of female chief executive offices created a superior balance between the three facets of the traits, especially a less dominant EE facet for any given degree of narcissism, according to Dr. Arbo.
In other words, the only way to explain the superior performance of female narcissists in chief executive officer positions is their ability to suppress the EE dimension, the exploitativeness, the lack of empathy, the entitlement, the aggression, the vindictiveness, their ability to suppress this even as they were emphasizing the other aspects or facets of narcissism.
Social role expectations may also constrain the behavior of female chief executive officers, said Arbo.
Women are supposed to be more nurturing and warm.
And thus, while chief executive officer narcissism has been linked to unethical and questionable behaviors, it is likely to be less severe in the case of narcissistic female CEOs.
Women also exhibit higher rates than men of empathy-related evolutionary traits, which could further restrain the dark side of narcissism.
Evolutionarily, when we were hunters and gatherers, women were looking after the family, especially children.
They gathered fruits, etc.
While men were hunters and warriors, said Arbo, and in this case, he is wrong.
Recent studies demonstrate conclusively that both women and men were hunters.
Women participated in hunting as much as men.
Anyhow, some recent evidence paints this picture as not so black and white, but women needed more empathy in their roles as men.
Psychology literature says that we are still born with a brain calibrated to our time as hunters and gatherers.
And so the scholars analyzed the language of the chief executive officers.
There were question and answer sessions, and quarterly earnings, conference calls, and so on and so forth.
And they analyzed the language as a proxy.
It is via the language that they wished or attempted to gain insight into the inside of the various chief executive officers.
And the scholars focused on the leaders’ use of first-person singular pronouns.
I mean my versus first-person plural pronouns.
We are sour.
This is what I call pronoun first-person pronoun density.
So research has shown that people who are more narcissistic tend to use more first-person single pronouns and fewer first-person plural pronouns.
Again, this is what is known as pronoun density.
So they studied various sessions, question and answer sessions and so on and so forth, presentations, because in questions and answer sessions, there is a lot of spontaneity.
The Speech Act, the verbiage, they are unscripted.
They are more likely to reveal the true personality of the chief executive officer, explained the researchers.
They found that companies run by female chief executive officers were 25% more narcissistic than the average female, were significantly more successful.
So in the case of women, the more narcissistic they are, the more successful the company they run.
And there’s no reason to not extend this finding and assume, for example, that narcissistic female political leaders, politicians, would not be more successful than narcissistic male politicians.
Generally, narcissistic leaders, when they are female, would be more successful than male.
Okay.
Dr. Abo said, “If a woman is in the middle of the upper half of narcissism, among female chief executive officers, she is associated with and likely causes a 14% increase in profitability and a 13.5% increase in valuation than an average woman, non-narcissistic chief executive.
Narcissism adds 15% to the value of the company.” Wow.
Now we have a number.
We can put a number on it.
When comparing men and women, the researchers found that narcissistic female chief executive officers are associated with 10% to 20% better corporate performance, 10% better profitability and 20% better valuation than equally narcissistic male chief executive officers.
Now that’s an amazing fact.
It means that there is a kind of hierarchy, kind of pyramid.
At the top of a corporate pyramid are narcissistic female women chief executive officers.
They make the company 15% more profitable, 20% more valuable.
At the middle rung, there are female chief executive officers who are not narcissistic and at the bottom they are male chief executive officers who are 20%.
Their performance is 20% worse than the performance of narcissistic female chief executive officers.
The journal is finance research letters.
Go to the description to find the bibliographic reference and try to find it online.
It’s a very interesting magazine, academic journal, because it publishes quite a few articles about narcissism in corporate settings.
In the same volume actually, June 2024, volume 64, I found another article, “Chief Financial Officer Narcissism and Corporate Digital Transformation” by Yao, Ni, Qian, Yang and Kui.
I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly, Chinese authors.
They discovered they studied the impact of chief financial officers narcissistic tendencies on corporate digital transformation.
Needless to add, the digital transformation adds to productivity and to the bottom line enhances profitability and ultimately the valuation of a company.
What they found out is that the narcissistic tendency of chief financial officers promotes digital transformation of enterprises.
Basic chief financial officers promote digital transformation by enhancing their own power and corporate innovation capabilities.
The promoting effect of CFO, Chief Financial Officer Narcissism, on digital transformation in companies is more significant in non-state owned, large, high leverage enterprises.
And there is a higher level of economic policy uncertainty.
The narcissistic CFO further magnifies the value-added effect of digital transformation on total factor productivity in enterprises.
The authors say the research conclusion broadens the application research of high order echelon theory and enriches the research on influencing factors of enterprise digital transformation.
Narcissism is beginning to emerge as a corporate asset.
Narcissism of chief financial officers, narcissism of chief executive officer in the upper layers of management seems to be a beneficial thing, especially if the chief executive officer is a female and the chief financial officer is a male and both of them are narcissists.
Their narcissism is going to positively affect the company’s value, valuation, the company’s bottom line through profitability and through other parameters of performance.
Fascinating.
