Ego and academic ethics: A brief investigation into the associations among three facets of narcissism, academic entitlement, and academic dishonesty

Educators continue to face two challenges in the classroom: academic entitlement and academic dishonesty. While both have been linked to narcissism, much of the existing work has relied on only a single, unidimensional measure of the trait, obscuring how its distinct facets are differentially associated with problematic academic behaviors. The present preregistered study (N = 338) explores the associations of three facets of narcissism—antagonism, agentic extraversion, and narcissistic neuroticism—with academic entitlement and attitudes toward academic dishonesty. We hypothesized that the three facets of narcissism would be positively associated with both constructs. Our results showed that antagonism was significantly positively correlated with academic entitlement and permissive attitudes toward academic dishonesty, potentially due to the arrogance and deceitfulness characteristic of the facet. We also found that agentic extraversion was significantly positively correlated with academic entitlement but not academic dishonesty, perhaps a consequence of the facet’s grandiose (but not necessarily deceitful) nature. Narcissistic neuroticism was associated with neither academic entitlement nor academic dishonesty, indicating that the shame and vulnerability typical of the facet likely do not play a role in either construct. These findings provide insight into the personality correlates of academic entitlement and academic dishonesty and could be used to help develop targeted interventions for combatting these problematic beliefs and behaviors.