“Narcissistic people have very high self-evaluations. This means they're able to do things in spite of not having mastered their brief. I'm thinking of Boris Johnson and Trump, in spite of having lots of legal cases against them. And so the kind of things that would make the rest of us anxious, the narcissist is so engrossed in their positive self-perception that they're not fazed by things. But the other thing about narcissism, particularly in the media, it can create charisma, and charisma gives you status, and status makes you persuasive. And persuasion gets you money and power and all sorts of other things, and these reinforce the charisma. So there's a rather sinister, vicious cycle to the narcissist and vicious to the rest of us. That can put people who are not fit for power in power because of the superficial, supreme overconfidence that is a part of narcissism.”

Broadcast on:

28 Sep 2023