Researchers invited over 100 people to complete escape room challenges in small groups, observing their interactions and behaviours throughout the tasks.
The findings have been published in the journal Behavioral Sciences.
"Although this took place in a fun, social setting, the teams still needed to build trust, share ideas and plan together to complete the challenges," explained Dr Reece Bush-Evans, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Bournemouth University who led the study. "These are exactly the skills needed for success in real-world teams. Our results showed that when one person believes they're superior to their teammates, it can damage team dynamics and lead to failure."
Dr Bush-Evans and his team identified two distinct forms of narcissism among participants: Narcissistic Admiration – where individuals are charming, confident, and drawn to the spotlight, and Narcissistic Rivalry - where people are combative, competitive and quick to dismiss others' ideas or take offence.
Before and after the challenge, all participants rated themselves and their teammates on traits including friendliness, confidence, trustworthiness and aggression. The researchers then examined how these perceptions influenced team cohesion, team conflict, and overall performance (i.e., did they escape the rooms).
Teams with higher levels of narcissistic rivalry showed significantly less unity and performed worse in the escape room.
"We noticed that competitive and rivalrous individuals were more likely to ignore or dismiss their teammate's ideas, hold back information, and find the experience more frustrating. This wrecked the team bond that was needed to get the job done," Dr Bush-Evans explained.
In contrast, narcissistic admiration didn't seem to help or harm performance, though those individuals were increasingly viewed as less hardworking and more arrogant by their teammates as the challenge progressed.
"Their charisma may have impressed their colleagues at first, but this wore thin when it wasn't backed up with useful contributions," said Dr Bush-Evans.
The researchers believe these insights are relevant not just for social settings but for modern workplaces – especially in face-to-face, online and hybrid teams.
"Confidence and charm can easily be mistaken for competence," Dr Bush-Evans concluded. "Our study shows that these traits can actually limit what a team achieves. The most successful teams weren't the loudest, but the most cooperative. Leaders should value good listeners just as much as outspoken voices."
Journal Reference: Bush-Evans, Reece D., Claire M. Hart, Sylwia Z. Cisek, Liam P. Satchell, and Constantine Sedikides. 2025. "Narcissism in Action: Perceptions, Team Dynamics, and Performance in Naturalistic Escape Room Settings" Behavioral Sciences 15, no. 11: 1461. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15111461
(Score: 4, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday November 27, @12:17AM (4 children)
Or a whole country.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday November 27, @02:49AM
There is no escape.
IT'S A TRAP!
The "Quiet, Piggy!" is strong in this one.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 4, Informative) by srobert on Sunday November 30, @03:53AM (2 children)
I'll bet we can all think of someone who checks off every item on this list. In fact I'll bet we're all thinking of the same person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, @08:20AM
Thank you for posting a list that describes the most frustrating people I have worked with
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, @11:27AM
The aggressive ones stay, and will run off the artistic ones who will typically value pride of workmanship over a bottom line for someone else.
Nice guys finish last, but it was the nice guys who were doing the work.
But typically it's a completely different mindset to solve a technical problem than to maximize financial return on it. It's been my observation that the goose that was laying the golden eggs is the first to go so as to get all the eggs NOW, then go find another goose.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27, @02:00AM (3 children)
Over this past summer, with a couple of friends, we salvaged a 40 year old test machine headed for the scrap heap (company shut down, couldn't be bothered to pay to have it serviced so it could be sold). One of us wanted the machine to use as part of his startup (one of these machines new might be $5 Million), so he paid expenses, but all the labor was volunteer, to rescue the old beast. This thing had a Sun workstation (from the last update, c.2000) that controlled the original tall rack of dedicated hardware that ran the electric & servo hydraulics on the rig.
When we got there, it wouldn't run, hadn't been used in about a year. There were numerous problems to solve. After a few days, my comment was that we were in an escape room and there was no way out until everything worked.
It was one of the best small crews I've ever been part of, cadging time from our day jobs to get over to the old factory, digging through several feet of docs in thick binders, hitting various sorts of industrial supply companies for parts. We all brought different experience and worked with no "ego" problems at all. Our "fearless leader" kept morale up by taking us out for some nice meals over the weekends (when the site was closed) and hosting an impromptu barbecue.
Took about a month to get it running. Then another three weeks to disassemble and get all the parts crated and into a shipping container.
If it had been a job with a traditional top-down boss, I would have quit. Instead, the challenge of a shared goal, and the chance to learn more about how that thing worked (something I'd often wondered about) was more than enough motivation.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Saturday November 29, @11:20PM (1 child)
I don't think something like that would even be possible in a traditional boss-led workplace. What you'd need is one or more old farts(tm) supervising/guiding several apprentices/volunteers trying to get it running again, which is the traditional model used for restoring older equipment back to working order. There was one large project I visited where the youngest supervisor/mentor was probably in his 80s, with a bunch of volunteer kids (meaning people in their 40s) doing the work under supervision by the old guys.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, @11:10AM
North American Aviation was once like that.
Headed by test pilots, aircraft enthusiasts, and amateur radio operators.
We designed the damnedest things for the military, and well known for innovation.
We were bought by investors. They brought in management teams that knew lots of psychology, leadership, motivational skills, compartmentalization, ranking, charge numbers, all sorts of busywork that had nothing to do with aviation. It was all about bean-counting.
Our experienced people retired, although they didn't want to. The younger people ( my cohorts ) had to fend for ourselves, as the internet didn't exist back then, and we were trying to get back to where we were before the MBA gutted the place, and had little, if anything, to share with the new hires about how the company 's products worked.
For several years, we ran on reputation, handshakes, and proposals, but we weren't turning out near the stuff we used to. It took several years to destroy our reputation, but we did. Our campus was sold off to other investors, Most of the engineers were gone. But we still had lots of shakers of the hand still around.
I don't think we can recreate the WW2 environment that fostered the kind of creativity NAA was known for, as the government had more pressing matters than bickering over tax codes, employment law, and pecking orders. That plane had to fly, and only the test pilots knew ( by actually flying the thing ) what we had to do, and we all did everything in our power to follow the test pilots requests. Now it's all endless performance reviews which are basically a correlation between my assignment and my ability mostly as a product of experience and training - all resulting on the luck of the draw - as the need to rank everyone is far more important than actually doing anything as a collaborative effort. Compartmentalization and charge numbers have pretty well shut down team efforts as we strive for ranking data for executive review.
It was sad seeing the company disintegrate.
Someone else will have to actually build the thing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Sunday November 30, @03:12AM
Something similar from a top-down boss, but not a traditional one [tomshardware.com].