Abstract
Narcissism personality is a person thinking they are better than other and prior study conducted found it has significant correlation with student education performance. Individual with narcissistic personality tend to have strong entitlement, authority, self-admiration and superiority. This personality has both cognitive and motivational elements. The student with narcissistic behaviour tend to always improve themselves. There were lack of studies in examining narcissistic personality in Malaysia. The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between narcissistic personalities among accounting undergraduate in Malaysia. This study intend to examine if the non-pathological narcissistic personality are related to the individual performance. The primary data on Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) test were collected from 35 accounting students. The test used was adequate to Malaysia context. Dependent variable in this study is student cumulative grade point average (CGPA) and independent variable are narcissistic personality elements. This study found significant relationship between NPI and accounting undergraduate academic performance. This study may be useful to the educator and higher learning institution in determining the accounting student narcissistic behaviour and their education performance. There are greater needs of attention paid to phenomenon of narcissistic personality traits among undergraduates because negative traits can be harmful to them. Self-esteem can lead to the negative result in the long term.
Keywords: Narcissismnarcissistic personality indexhigher learning institution
Introduction
Since 1800, personality disorder become one of the main attention in western studies greater attention need to be on personality disorder of student in university. Narcissism personality is a person thinking they are better than other and prior study conducted found it has significant correlation with student education performance. The trend shows that narcissism is varies over the generation (Dworkis, 2013). Hudson (2012) mentioned that most of the future leaders are from student from good academic background, thus narcissistic not only affecting individual performance but also affecting the whole society. Campbell et al. (2011) also highlighted that narcissism personality might have importance influence on behaviour in the workplace. Individual with narcissistic personality tend to have strong entitlement, authority, self-admiration and superiority. This personality has both cognitive and motivational elements. The student with narcissistic behaviour tend to always improve themselves. There were lack of studies in examining narcissistic personality in Malaysia. This study intend to examine if the non-pathological narcissistic personality are related to the individual performance. The primary data on Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) test were collected from 35 accounting students. The test used was adequate to Malaysia context. Dependent variable in this study is student cumulative grade point average (CGPA) and independent variable are narcissistic personality elements.
Narcisisstic personality and academic performance
Study on narcissistic behaviour and student performance were firstly conducted by Vigilante (1983) that focus on 169 social work students found that narcissistic personality can be used as predictor for student academic performance. This study using questionnaire as a survey instrument. Study done by Papageorgiou et al. (2018) found that student with subclinical narcissistic personality tend to performed better in academic. It show that student with narcissistic trait are having good mental toughness which able to endure the academic progress and always tried to perform better than others. This study conclude that narcissistic personality and mental toughness is one of the non-cognitive components in determining student performance in school.
Another study by de Lima et al. (2017) that used 106 Brazilian accounting student found that the higher narcissistic behaviour, it can lead to the higher academic performance of the students. This study collect the data on narcissistic behaviour by using Narcisistic Personality Inventory (NPI), contain seven characteristic of narcissistic personality namely authority, self-sufficiency, vanity, superiority, exhibitionism, exploitativeness and entitlement. Wallace and Baumeister (2002) mentioned that high self-sufficiency and sel-eficacy can lead to the better student achievement. Study done by Avelino and de Lima (2017) that also focusing on accounting student academic performance found moderate relationship between narcissistic personality and student performance.
Similar study conducted by Aldin et al. (2011) on Master of Accounting students in Iran found that there is significant correlation between individual personality and their academic performance. Meanwhile, study done by Caixeta (2011) towards undergraduate on private institution found there is significant correlation between student psychological sufferings with their academic performance. Caixeta (2011) mentioned that student that have low narcissistic personality tend not to perform better.
This study is using NPI score as determinants of narcissism behaviour and accounting undergraduates as a sample. This is similar to the study done by de de Lima et al. (2017) and Wallace & Baumeister (2002) and it is different from prior study that using other measurement as determinants such as Dark Triads for narcissism behaviour and most of the prior study are focusing on working employee in an organisation rather than student as a sample. It is important to have more study conducted on student because in the future, they will become a leader and their narcissistic behaviour will influence the society.
Significance of the study
This study may be useful to the educator and higher learning institution in determining the accounting student narcissistic behaviour and their education performance. There are greater needs of attention paid to phenomenon of narcissistic personality traits among undergraduates because negative traits can be harmful to them. Self-esteem can lead to the negative result in the long term. For researcher, this study will help them to uncover the critical area on narcissism behaviour among accounting undergraduate in Malaysia that difficult for them to explore. Thus, a possibility of new and upcoming research might achieved.
Problem Statement
In the accounting field the study on narcissistic behaviour were focusing on the narcissism among accounting managers such as accounting executives and chief executive officer with an accounting background the impact of the behaviour on firm performance and financial reporting disclosure (Dworkis, 2013; Hales et al. 2012). Meanwhile there is a little study that focus on accounting student and their narcissistic personality especially in Malaysia. This lead to incomplete research on this theme with the absence of accounting student and this also mention by Menon and Sharland (2011) that narcissistic personality shall be determine not just on their working life, but also on academic experience.
Research Questions
The research question for this study are as follows:
What are the extent of Narcissistic Personality Inventory Score for undergraduate in higher learning institution?
Is there any significant relationship between narcissistic personality with undergraduate academic performance?
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to determine the extent of Narcissistic Personalilty Inventory Score among accounting undergraduate in higher leaning institution, the other purpose for this study is to determine the relationship between narcissistic behaviour with the accounting undergraduate academic performance.
Research Methods
In this section, this study will describe the types of research and collection procedure, population and sample for this study as well as measurement for each variables.
Type of research and data collection procedure
The type of this study is descriptive analysis. The data source for this study is primary data. Questionnaire were chosen as the data collection method because this study involves a sample of students from higher learning institution. It is quite difficult to use method such as interview when a large number of students are involved. This questionnaire were distribute through electronic questionnaire which is google form. In this research, the target population is the undergraduate students higher learning institution which is Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). The final sample for this study is 35 accounting undergraduates. the response rate of 35% from the total population of 98 students, deemed suitable for this study (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016). Sampling techniques that were used in this study is simple random sampling technique.
Measurement of variables
The data for demographic collected were focusing on gender, age and leadership experience. Dummy variable were used on gender where 0 is for female and 1 for male. Dummy variable also used in leadership experience where 0 if the sample did not have any experience and 1 if they hold position as leader in club or society. Age were grouped into 18-19 years old, 20-21 years old, 22-23 years old and 24 years old and above. Dependent variable for this study is student academic performance, which is cumulative grade point average (CGPA), and it is categorised to 2.75-2.99, 3.00-3.45 and 3.50-4.00. Independent variable for this study is Narcissistic Personality Inventory Score with a total score of 40 points. It contains all characteristic of narcissistic behaviour which is authority, self-sufficiency, vanity, superiority, exhibitionism, exploitativeness and entitlement. This variable is also used by the prior study done by Gabriel et al. (1994), John and Robins (1994), Farwell and Wohlwend-Lloyd (1998), Wallace and Baumeister (2002), Hudson (2012) and de Lima et al. (2017).
Findings
This study will begin with demographic analysis and further explain the findings on narcissistic behaviour influencing student performance.
Demographic analysis
Based on Table
Based on the Table
Narcissistic Personality Inventory score
Table
Reliability analysis
Table
Regression Analysis
The regression analysis shown in Table
Table
Conclusion
Our results indicate that majority of the respondent have experience or currently holding leadership position in club or society at their university and most of them are having good academic results. This study also indicate that impact of narcissistic behavior towards academic performance are rather high. There are significant relationship between narcissistic behaviour with accounting undergraduates academic performance. This result similar to the prior study indicating that narcissistic personality person tend to perform better than other, especially on academic matters.
Limitation of the study
This study having limited number of samples which only consisting of 35 accounting undergraduates, ignoring the other programme such as finance, computer science and engineering. This study also only focus in one institution and these factors might lead to bias in the findings.
Recommendation for future research
Future research can be focusing on increasing the number of sample size and having a diverse programme as a sample. The comparison between the countries also can used as future research to get more result that is accurate on influence of narcissistic behaviour over student academic performance.
References
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30 December 2020
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Cite this article as:
Zainol, Z. B. (2020). Narcissism Behaviour And Accounting Undergraduate Performance In Higher Learning Institution. In N. S. Othman, A. H. B. Jaaffar, N. H. B. Harun, S. B. Buniamin, N. E. A. B. Mohamad, I. B. M. Ali, N. H. B. A. Razali, & S. L. B. M. Hashim (Eds.), Driving Sustainability through Business-Technology Synergy, vol 100. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 201-208). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.12.05.21