People who love themselves become leaders

A study showed that when a group does not have a decision maker, individuals who suffer from the syndrome love themselves to find ways to become the group leader. Interestingly, they often succeed in most cases.

According to psychologists from Ohio University (USA), people with self-love syndrome often like power, or brag about their abilities, spend too much time thinking about themselves, so they rarely care to the thoughts and feelings of others. However, overconfidence does not mean that they make more informed and timely decisions than others.

Excessive self-love syndrome is not the same as self-respect. "A person with high self-esteem is always confident and attractive, but they like to build a close relationship with the people around. Self-love lovers like to be noticed but never think of others" , Amy Brunell, a doctor of psychology at Ohio University (USA), said.

3 trials by Amy and colleagues show that aerial personalities make a wise decision maker.

In the first test, 432 students were asked to answer personal character questions in a survey. After that, they were grouped into groups of 4 people. Researchers question: Suppose each group is a senior committee representing students throughout the United States. The mission of the committee is to elect the executive director of the next term.

The results show that students who like power want to be elected as executives. They tend to lead the discussion in the group and the remaining members also consider them to be potential leaders.

In a leaderless group, self-love people always want to take leadership roles.Photo: corbis.com.

In the second study, the students in the experiment were divided into groups of 4. They had to imagine that they were on a ship and the ship was about to sink. Each person can choose only 15 items on the ship before going to the lifeboat to swim into an uninhabited island near the shipwreck. Groups must discuss what items to choose to survive on the uninhabited island.

Through observation, the team found that those who love themselves still play a role in leading the discussion process of the group. Their leadership role is unconsciously accepted by other members.

To assess the leadership of the volunteers, the team compared the 15 objects they selected with 15 items prepared by a US military special forces officer before reaching uninhabited places. The results show that lovers do not appear to be superior to others in choosing objects necessary for survival.

In the third test, the research team recruited 150 volunteers who were attending a master's degree in business administration at a university. Experts first asked them to answer personal questions. After that, the volunteers were divided into groups of 4 people. Each group must imagine that they are a school's board of directors and their task is to allocate a company's huge contribution.

The results show that students of self-love groups are more active than others in discussions and they always make the final decision to "finalize" the debate process. Most of their decisions are accepted.

Many studies show that overconfidence people often appear to be risky but not determined in decision making. Amy Brunell added that people with this syndrome prefer to become politicians because they like power, but many people want to become securities investors for adventure.