Vanity Fair: How professional life and vanity work together

Abstract

Achievements is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Have you ever wondered why is that? Extant literature shows how narcissism impact on performance. Here, however, we examined the influence of vanity on work environment. Accordingly, we conducted 3 studies, with different approaches (survey, field, and experiment). We find a positive relationship between educational level and vanity’ sub-dimension achievement view, and also a positive relation regarding age and self-esteem, for men and women (Study 1). In addition, the data collected from workers of a high performance team, yielded that respondents with higher tenure reported higher scores on achievement sub-dimensions of vanity (Study 2). Finally, results an experiment with 95 women, highlights a peer effect regarding vanity achievement dimensions and supports the positive relationship between age and self-esteem (Study 3). These approaches to the study of vanity and professional life will nurture new empirical work, and encourage interest in exploring a broader set of vanity studies.