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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: 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.