The program is a content-analysis tool that measures psychopathic and narcissistic traits in Fortune 100 business leaders. It features a built-in lexicon of words, phrases and rules that predict the aforementioned facets of one’s personality, according to Mashable.
The program first looks for self-focused words like “I,” “me,” “mine” and “my” and then for words that pertain to negative personality traits.
“”For example, one form of narcissism, called confident of grandiose narcissism depends on extraversion, so the program looks for words indicating exaggeration, confidence, enthusiasm, and energy,” said William Spangler, an associate professor in the School of Management at Binghamton and co-author of the study. “Another statistical program combines the self-focus words with the extraversion words to produce a measure of extraverted or grandiose narcissism.”
Besides textbook narcissism, the program can also detect neuroticism (words relating to doubt, anxiety, fear and so forth) and psychopathy, which is predicted by a combination of self-focused and aggressive word choices (ones relating to winning and fighting, for example).
The study involved analyzing 1,800 transcripts of television interviews and conference calls with stock analysts, as well as printed interviews with 150 CEOs of Fortune 100 companies. Spangler hopes that the program could be useful in helping businesses hire.
The study will be presented in Honolulu this May as part of the 29th annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conference.
A 2010 study shows that social media is often an easy place to spot potential narcissists. The findings showed that non-anonymous networks like Facebook are the ideal place for one to try and realize the “hoped-for possible self,” the type of person that one could potentially become given the right circumstances. Therefore narcissists are more active on Facebook, and identity-focused statements are much more common than in the offline world.
Narcissism is also likely to be found in online games like World of Warcraft, according to the Atlantic, where players get more and more prestige the higher they level up.
