A spotlight on creativity: narcissism and the performing arts

Abstract

The performing arts (music, dance and acting), has recently become an area of interest in psychology; however, this research remains limited in exploring relationships and potential predictions of personality and motivational factors for involvement or achievement in these arts. This study aims to investigate whether achievement and involvement in the performing arts is related to and predicted by: grandiose narcissism, which may relate to the performing arts through the desire to be admired and a tendency towards interpersonal competition; vulnerable narcissism, possibly observed in performing artists through difficulty with rejection and an exaggerated focus on the self; intrinsic motivation, the performing artists choice to be involved in this career for personal enjoyment, extrinsic motivation; a desire for external reward such as money or fame, and creative self-efficacy, as musicians, dancers or actors must believe in their personal creative abilities to choose to be involved in their art. This was a quantitative project where surveys were distributed by convenience sampling online using social media and to theatres (N = 129). This study found creative self-efficacy positively predicted involvement in music, dance, and acting and achievement in music and acting. Grandiose narcissism positively predicted involvement in music and acting and vulnerable narcissism negatively predicted involvement in acting. Overall, this study provides a novel contribution to research in the arts and psychology, as it provides evidence for performing artists as creative suggesting that performing artists value their creative abilities. As well as, outlining the presence of personality traits related to narcissism within the performing arts which have not been explored in this context.