Relationships Among Overt and Covert Narcissism and Vocational Interests with Respect to Gender

Larger numbers of students are attending four-year institutions than in previous years and are taking longer to complete their degree programs (Barton, 2002; Wirt, Choy, Rooney, Provasnik, Sen, & Tobin, 2004). These same students may also endorse higher levels of narcissism and have unrealistic expectations for their careers (Twenge, 2006). These trends present a challenge to career development professionals working in university and college settings. To assist students in solving their career problems, these professionals often assess vocational interests using Holland's theory and his Self-Directed Search (SDS) instrument (Holland, Powell, & Fritzsche, 1994). Yet, little is known about the relationships between narcissism and vocational interests, as they are assessed by the SDS. There are, however, separate lines of inquiry in the theoretical and empirical literature on narcissism and vocational interests. Narcissism has been well described in both the analytic and cognitive-behavioral traditions (Freud, 1989; Beck & Freeman, 1990). More specifically, two kinds of narcissism, overt and covert, have been empirically distinguished (Wink, 1991). Vocational interests have been described and studied for almost a century (Parsons, 1909). Holland's Theory and the SDS have also been extensively discussed over the past 35 years (Ruff, Reardon, & Bertoch, 2007). One variable, which has been shown to be related to both narcissism and vocational interests, is gender (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Holland, Fritzsche, & Powell, 1994). Therefore, the question posed by this study was, "What are the relationships among overt and covert narcissistic personality traits and assessed vocational interests with respect to gender?" To answer this question, data were collected for a co-relational study from a final sample of 259 college students enrolled in a career development course at a large southeastern university. In addition to a demographic form, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Terry, 1988), the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (Hendin & Cheek, 1997), and the SDS were administered to measure overt narcissism, covert narcissism, and Holland's primary and secondary constructs of vocational interests, respectively. Pearson product-moment correlations were calculated by gender among overt narcissism, covert narcissism, the primary constructs (i.e., the six RIASEC code-types), and the secondary constructs of consistency, coherence, differentiation, commonness, and profile elevation. Significant relationships were found between overt narcissism and the Enterprising code-type for both male and female participants. In males, overt narcissism was found to be significantly related to differentiation using both the high-low and Iachan index methods. However, in females, only the high-low method of calculating differentiation was found to produce a significant relationship with overt narcissism. No significant relationships were found between covert narcissism and Holland's primary and secondary constructs. As demonstrated by z-tests, no significant differences were found by gender for the relationships between either kind of narcissism and vocational interests. Limitations of the study were reviewed including the fact the sample was significantly higher in overt narcissism and lower in covert narcissism than those in past studies. Findings were discussed using a synthesis of the narcissism and vocational interest literature. Recommendations were made for theory development, practice, and future avenues of research.