Short CommunicationMirror, mirror on the wall, am I the greatest performer of all? Narcissism and self-reported and objective performance

- Narcissism is correlated with self-reported measures of performance.
- Narcissism is not correlated with objective measures of performance.
- Self-reported measures of performance and objective measures of performance are not correlated.
- Investors should rely on objective performance measures.

Narcissists are individuals whose personality exudes excessive self-love and inflated views of the self. To date, there is no clear understanding how this excessive love for the self is related to performance. The present study examines whether narcissists' inflated views of their own performance are substantiated by objective accounting performance. Our results show that individuals who score high on narcissism over-evaluate their performances and that their self-assessment is not correlated with objective indicators. Indeed, away from the magic mirror on the wall, narcissists are not the greatest performers after all.