Look how smart I am!: Only narcissistic admiration is associated with inflated reports of intelligence

Individuals with high grandiose narcissism tend to think they are extraordinarily intelligent, and these views determine their psychological well-being. In the current research, we investigated how two aspects of grandiose narcissism—admiration and rivalry—are associated with objective intelligence, subjective intelligence, and intelligence-related beliefs. We expected that only narcissistic admiration, which reflects the agentic aspect of grandiose narcissism, would be associated with subjective intelligence as the latter is regarded as a prototypical agentic attribute. In Study 1 (N = 311) narcissism (i.e., admiration and rivalry) was uncorrelated with objective intelligence but admiration was related to inflated self-reported intelligence as well as global life satisfaction and domain-specific intelligence satisfaction. Furthermore, intelligence-related beliefs mediated the link between admiration and life satisfaction. In Study 2 (N = 211), consistent with the predictions, people with high admiration perceived intelligence as an important way to gain popularity. By contrast, individuals scoring high on rivalry perceived intelligence as a factor influencing social status and having low importance in interpersonal relations. Our findings suggest that intelligence is a key characteristic only for those narcissists who score high on the admiration dimension, but not the rivalry dimension.