The Performer
Display high, leadership and the cost factor not.
Your Grandiose Exhibitionism factor sits above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample while Leadership/Authority and Entitlement/Exploitativeness both stay under it. Seven or more of the ten display items: the centre of attention, showing off, the mirror, the body, being noticed in public. In the 2011 study this factor tracked impulsivity rather than self-esteem, and it did not carry the exploitation the entitlement items do. What you have is appetite for the room's eyes, without the authority to run the room or the entitlement to bill it.
What it looks like from the inside
You know when you are being watched and you prefer it. You dress, tell and enter for effect, and the effect is the point, not what it gets you. When attention moves elsewhere you feel it before you name it. What you do not do, on this instrument, is expect other people to pay for the show: the entitlement items are the ones you answered the ordinary way.
What other people see
People find you fun before they find you much, and they rarely find you dangerous. The complaint, when it comes, is about air time, not about being used. Whether the display reads as charm or as need depends on the room, and you can usually tell which.
Blind spots
- Display without leadership is the configuration most exposed to a bad audience. The confidence is in the being seen, so a room that stops looking takes it with it.
- The mirror and body items are the ones most people find hardest to admit. You admitted them. That honesty is itself information about how little the display embarrasses you.
- Display and entitlement correlate at about .2 in the college sample, low but not zero. Watch the four entitlement items over time; they are the ones that would change what this profile costs.
What to do with it
Nothing here is a clinical flag. The two things worth doing are the covert test, because the hypersensitive kind also wants to be seen and hides it, and the Dark Triad test, whose narcissism scale asks about the same appetite in a different shape. Then the book's chapter on becoming magnetic on purpose, because you already are and it would be a waste not to know how it works.
The other profiles
Frequently asked questions
What does "The Performer" mean on The Narcissist Test?
Your Grandiose Exhibitionism factor sits above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample while Leadership/Authority and Entitlement/Exploitativeness both stay under it. Seven or more of the ten display items: the centre of attention, showing off, the mirror, the body, being noticed in public. In the 2011 study this factor tracked impulsivity rather than self-esteem, and it did not carry the exploitation the entitlement items do. What you have is appetite for the room's eyes, without the authority to run the room or the entitlement to bill it.
Is "The Performer" a diagnosis?
No. It describes a pattern of answers on a self-report instrument. Only a clinician can diagnose, and only with a proper assessment; the result is a reading aid for recognition.
What should someone with this result do next?
Nothing here is a clinical flag. The two things worth doing are the covert test, because the hypersensitive kind also wants to be seen and hides it, and the Dark Triad test, whose narcissism scale asks about the same appetite in a different shape. Then the book's chapter on becoming magnetic on purpose, because you already are and it would be a waste not to know how it works.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis. It describes a pattern of answers on a self-report instrument; only a clinician can diagnose, and only with a proper assessment.