Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Using both clinical and subclinical measures of narcissism, we examined others' perceptions, selfperceptions and meta-perceptions of narcissists across a wide range of traits for a new acquaintance and close other (Study 1), longitudinally with a group of new acquaintances (Study 2), and among coworkers (Study 3). Results bring us to three surprising conclusions about narcissists: 1) they understand that others see them less positively than they see themselves (i.e., their meta-perceptions are less biased than are their self-perceptions), 2) they have some insight into the fact that they make positive first impressions that deteriorate over time, and 3) they have insight into their narcissistic personality (e.g., they describe themselves as arrogant). These findings shed light on some of the psychological mechanisms underlying narcissism. Keywordsnarcissism; meta-perception; interpersonal perception; personality "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change" Frank Lloyd Wright (quoted in the Michigan Daily, 1998) Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Lack of self-insight is believed to be a hallmark of narcissism, which suggests that narcissists should not have insight into the negative aspects of their personality or their reputation (e.g., arrogant, disagreeable, entitled). Indeed, narcissists see themselves very positively (e.g., Clifton, Turkheimer, & Oltmanns, 2004) and are motivated to maintain their overly positive self-perceptions (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001) which has led researchers to conclude that narcissists "…have less insight into their own condition" (Emmons, 1984, p. 297) and "…probably misunderstand how they are perceived" (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001, p. 183). The main goal of this paper is to test these conclusions by empirically examining whether narcissists have insight into their personality, especially their narcissistic characteristics, and their reputation. Throughout the paper we take a dimensional approach to narcissism and use the term 'narcissist' to refer to people who score high on measures of clinical or subclinical narcissism (Miller & Campbell, 2010 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptTo assess the extent to which narcissists have insight into their personality and reputation, we conduct a multiple-perspective examination of how narcissists are seen by others (i.e., others' perceptions), how they see themselves (i.e., self-perceptions), and how they believe they are seen by others (i.e., meta-perceptions). We also examine these multiple perspectives across several social contexts including new acquaintances, acquaintances not selected by the target (e.g., coworkers), and close others (e.g., friends and family). Thus, we provide a novel, comprehensive look at the interpersonal dynamics of narcissis...

Social and personality psychologists are often interested in the extent to which similarity, agreement, or matching matters. The current article describes response surface analysis (RSA), an approach designed to answer questions about how (mis)matching predictors relate to outcomes while avoiding many of the statistical limitations of alternative, often-used approaches. We explain how RSA provides compressive and often more valid answers to questions about (mis)matching predictors than traditional approaches provide, outline steps on how to use RSA (including modifiable syntax), and demonstrate how to interpret RSA output with an example. To bolster our argument that RSA overcomes many limitations of traditional approaches (i.e., incomplete or misleading inferences), we compare results from four popular approaches (i.e., difference scores, residuals, moderated regression, and the truth and bias model) to those obtained from RSA. We discuss specific applications of RSA to social and personality psychology research.

The intuition that we have privileged and unrestricted access to ourselves – that we inevitably know who we are, how we feel, what we do, and what we think – is very compelling. Here, we review three types of evidence about the accuracy of self‐perceptions of personality and conclude that the glass is neither full nor empty. First, studies comparing self‐perceptions of personality to objective criteria suggest that self‐perceptions are at least tethered to reality – people are not completely clueless about how they behave, but they are also far from perfect. Second, studies examining how well people’s self‐perceptions agree with others’ perceptions of them suggest that people’s self‐views are not completely out of synch with how they are seen by those who know them best, but they are also far from identical. Third, studies examining whether people know the impressions they make on others suggest that people do have some glimmer of insight into the fact that others see them differently than they see themselves but there is still a great deal people do not know about how others see them. The findings from all three approaches point to the conclusion that self‐knowledge exists but leaves something to be desired. The status of people’s self‐knowledge about their own personality has vast implications both for our conception of ourselves as rational agents and for the methods of psychological inquiry.

Although people can accurately guess how others see them, many studies have suggested that this may only be because people generally assume that others see them as they see themselves. These findings raise the question: In their everyday lives, do people understand the distinction between how they see their own personality and how others see their personality? We examined whether people make this distinction, or whether people possess what we call meta-insight. In 3 studies, we assessed meta-insight for a broad range of traits (e.g., Big Five, intelligent, funny) across several naturalistic social contexts (e.g., first impression, friends). Our findings suggest that people can make valid distinctions between how they see themselves and how others see them. Thus, people seem to have some genuine insight into their reputation and do not achieve meta-accuracy only by capitalizing on the fact that others see them similarly to how they see themselves.Keywords: meta-perception, interpersonal perception, personality I've always known that there's more going on inside me than finds its way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone. Who doesn't regret that he isn't more fully understood?-Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs Like Richard Russo's character, many people have likely had the experience of feeling that others do not see them the way they see themselves. People's beliefs about how others see them, called meta-perceptions, guide their behavior and affect their relationships. Given the significance of these beliefs, an important issue is whether meta-perceptions are accurate, or whether people achieve meta-accuracy (Kenny, 1994). Although there are several ways to conceptualize and measure meta-accuracy, overall it appears that people do have some insight into the personality impressions they make on others (e.g., Carlson & Furr, 2009; Carlson & Kenny, in press;Levesque, 1997;Malloy, Albright, Kenny, Agatstein, & Winquist, 1997). Intuitively, such findings suggest that people are capable of perspective taking or even mind reading. However, there is convincing evidence that instead of picking up on cues from others, people base their meta-perceptions primarily on their self-perceptions (e.g., Chambers, Epley, Savitsky, & Windschitl, 2008;Kaplan, Santuzzi, & Ruscher, 2009;Kenny & DePaulo, 1993;Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979). In other words, metaaccuracy can be achieved without ever looking outside of the self. Such findings raise the question, Do people know the difference between how they see themselves and how others see them?The goal of the present research was to investigate whether people understand the distinction between how they see their own personality and how others see their personality, a new form of self-knowledge we call meta-insight. Specifically, meta-insight reflects the relationship between the beliefs people have about the impressions they make on others (i.e., their meta-perceptions) and others' actual impressions, independent of how people see themselves. To our knowledge, no study has sy...

Most people believe that they know themselves better than anyone else knows them. However, a complete picture of what a person is like requires both the person's own perspective and the perspective of others who know him or her well. People's perceptions of their own personalities, while largely accurate, contain important omissions. Some of these blind spots are likely due to a simple lack of information, whereas others are due to motivated distortions in our self-perceptions. Perhaps for these reasons, others can perceive some aspects of personality better than the self can. This is especially true for traits that are very desirable or undesirable, when motivational factors are most likely to distort self-perceptions. Therefore, much can be learned about a person's personality from how he or she is seen by others. Future research should examine how people can tap into others' knowledge to improve self-knowledge.