Self-centered boss? Family must be rich

Correlation found between higher incomes, bigger egos

Researchers have found links between leaders’ narcissism, worse reviews of their leadership behavior and a surprising third factor: How much money their families had when they were growing up.

The study, published online by the Academy of Management Journal and recently highlighted by the Harvard Business Review, claims to be one of the first to explore a tie, if an indirect one, between leaders’ family income during childhood and their leadership behaviors later in life. As income inequality in increasing, said Sean Martin, an assistant professor at Boston College, it’s also part of a growing body of research that’s studying the effects of higher incomes on social behavior.

“We’re trying to understand what it means for how people treat each other,” Martin said. How does income inequality “relate to the decisions people make in business and in leader-follower relationships? What are the effects of this growing socio-economic trend?”

Martin and his co-authors studied 229 U.S. Military Academy graduates who now hold Army leadership positions, which allowed things like college education, current income and the leaders’ hierarchical level to remain standard across the study. The researchers gathered information about the leaders’ parents’ income from their applications to the school. They then asked them to fill out surveys that assessed their narcissism, and a larger group of their subordinates to answer questions about their performance on a variety of leadership traits, such as showing care for others or pushing for innovation and change.

They found an indirect relationship between the three. The study showed a strong correlation between the leaders’ par-