Do Narcissists Sell More Art for Higher Prices?

“Narcissists sell more works of art, and at higher prices,” claims The European Journal Of Finance.

A tendency toward narcissism is usually judged negatively, as though it were something fleeting and not to be taken seriously. But not in the art world – it turns out that it is precisely egocentric personalities who hold more exhibitions, generate more admiration, and the fascination they inspire lasts longer than one might think, especially in the art world.

Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous artists in history, once said: "God is an artist. So am I. I am God, I am God, I am God." One of his lovers, Françoise Gilot, recalled Picasso saying: "Nothing really matters to me. Other people are just dust motes floating in the sunlight. All you need to do is sweep, and they all go away."

Such behaviour is clearly deeply egocentric and narcissistic, but a study examining nearly half a million works revealed a few more interesting findings.

According to the study, narcissism has a positive effect on sales – that is, it significantly raises the prices of artworks and improves auction results. The study's author, Yi Zhou, and his team reached this conclusion by using a special program to examine the size of artists' signatures, among a range of other factors. On the forty-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scale, signature size is directly linked to a person's tendency toward narcissism.

Personalities prone to narcissism also tend to create more work, and the works they produce tend to be larger.

The study included 416,665 paintings, among them works by Picasso, Dalí, and Van Gogh. It also examined auction sales results from 1980 to 2012.

You can read the full study here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1351847X.2016.1151804

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