title: Narcissism predicts impulsive buying: phenotypic and genetic evidence.
abstract: Impulsive buying makes billions of dollars for retail businesses every year, particularly in an era of thriving e-commerce. Narcissism, characterized by impulsivity and materialism, may serve as a potential antecedent to impulsive buying. To test this hypothesis, two studies examined the relationship between narcissism and impulsive buying. In Study 1, we surveyed an online sample and found that while adaptive narcissism was not correlated with impulsive buying, maladaptive narcissism was significantly predictive of the impulsive buying tendency. By investigating 304 twin pairs, Study 2 showed that global narcissism and its two components, adaptive and maladaptive narcissism, as well as the impulsive buying tendency were heritable. The study found, moreover, that the connections between global narcissism and impulsive buying, and between maladaptive narcissism and impulsive buying were genetically based. These findings not only establish a link between narcissism and impulsive buying but also help to identify the origins of the link. The present studies deepen our understanding of narcissism, impulsive buying, and their interrelationship.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Huajian
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yuanyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University, Tulsa OK, USA.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yu L L
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Luo
keywords: adaptive narcissism; behavior genetics; impulsive buying; maladaptive narcissism; narcissism; twin study