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I feel smart today! A daily diary study on narcissism and self-assessed intelligence
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Description: Typically, intelligence is considered to determine the success and welfare of an individual. Although the objective level of intelligence is not associated with narcissism, relations to self-assessed intelligence (SAI) have been repeatedly reported. However, most research neglected both the multifaceted nature of narcissism (i.e., the fact that narcissism encompasses agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic facets) and the well-documented existence of within-person fluctuations of narcissism. In the current daily diary study (N = 176; N = 3975 total observations), we examined the dynamics of relationships between various facets of narcissism (i.e., agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic) and SAI assessed during 28 consecutive days. The results showed that although the varying narcissism facets did not meaningfully correlate with the objective level of intelligence, agentic narcissism was positively associated with SAI, while neurotic narcissism was negatively associated to it on the between-person level. At the within-person level, only the agentic facet remained a significant and positive predictor. Antagonistic narcissism was unrelated to SAI either on the between- and within-person levels, but it was positively associated with gross variability and instability of SAI. Our study confirms the robust association between agentic narcissism and SAI by showing that on moments when people rated themselves as higher in agentic narcissism, they also perceived themselves as smarter. Our findings also highlight the role of antagonistic narcissism in its ability to predict instability of self-perceptions.