An Emotional Desert? Leader Narcissism, Affective Events, and Affect-Laden Leader Behaviors

Previous literature has regarded narcissistic leaders as “emotional deserts,” uncomfortable with their own affectivity, thereby shunning emotions as a whole. However, recent research in personality psychology has highlighted how narcissists can actually be overwhelmed by emotions. To better understand the affective experiences of narcissistic leaders, we conduct an experience sampling study and an experiment to investigate how leaders respond both affectively and behaviorally to varying affective events. Employing a motive-based lens via the Self-Regulatory Processing Model of Narcissism, we hypothesize and find that narcissistic leaders, in an effort to maintain their leader identity and ego, suppress positive affective reactions to positive affective events and exaggerate negative affective reactions to negative affective events. As a result, we also find narcissistic leaders deploy fewer positive and more negative affect displays and affect-laden leader behaviors (e.g., managerial consideration and abusive supervision, respectively). Important theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and directions for future research are provided.