IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0249892.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dimensions of pathological narcissism and intention to vote for Donald Trump

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew M Yalch

Abstract

Pathological narcissism is a term often applied to former President Donald Trump, but it has been less examined as a potential predictor of voting for him. Trump projects a grandiose and omnipotent self-image during press conferences and rallies, and his followers at these events often respond with both effusive admiration and an inflated sense of their own self-regard, all of which are aspects of narcissism. However, while Trump’s personal narcissism has been well documented, there is little research on the narcissism of his supporters. In this study we conducted an exploratory analysis examining the hierarchical structure of pathological narcissism and which aspects of narcissism within that structure were associated with intended voting for Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in a sample of U.S. residents collected online (N = 495) using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Results indicated that an eight-echelon hierarchy best fit the data. Within this hierarchy, antagonistic and indifferent aspects of narcissism within the fifth echelon best predicted intended voting for Trump over and above relevant demographic variables. These results have implications for the study of narcissism and, especially given the results of the 2020 election, the degree to which one can make use of narcissistic aspects of personality in political contests.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew M Yalch, 2021. "Dimensions of pathological narcissism and intention to vote for Donald Trump," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-13, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0249892
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249892
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249892&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0249892?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter K. Hatemi & Zoltán Fazekas, 2018. "Narcissism and Political Orientations," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(4), pages 873-888, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alan C. Logan & Susan L. Prescott, 2022. "Planetary Health: We Need to Talk about Narcissism," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      More about this item

      Statistics

      Access and download statistics

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0249892. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.