Narcissism and the Aesthetics of Grandiosity

The Roman emperor Augustus presided over a series of structures that bore his name, from the Forum of Augustus to the Ara Pacis Augustae (the Altar of Augustan Peace), which the Senate commissioned in his honor in 13 BC and which stood in the same district as his own mausoleum. Augustus’ self-reference was not subtle. The mausoleum’s visual proximity to the Altar of Peace, a monument designed to represent the grandeur of the Roman Empire, immortalized Augustus’ memory as inextricable from the civilization itself.

Grandiosity of this magnitude is not unique to Augustus or Mussolini, who famously excavated the Ara Pacis and reassembled it beside the mausoleum in 1938 to evoke the same Italian nationalistic pride as his predecessor almost 2,000 years before. Grandiosity by itself does not warrant a diagnosis of narcissism, but it is one of the most salient features of the personality disorder. The erection of monuments in the name of the great leader shows, with striking regularity across history and continents, that narcissism is legible in aesthetics. The Romans wouldn’t have called Augustus’ self-preoccupation narcissistic. However, they may have whispered to each other in the forum about his superbia (arrogance and self-importance) and rampant philautia, a Greek term denoting self-love in both its healthy and destructive forms.

Having studied the effects of narcissism on the psyche and relationships, I’m familiar with how narcissistic personality traits can find their way into many areas of life. However, as I’ve delved into the psychology of aesthetics, I’ve realized that grandiosity, in particular, is evident in the very structures narcissists choose to represent their egos. This shows up in everything from their physical presentation and image curation to the buildings, monuments, and altars that bear their names. Each construction in the physical world reflects an inner self that cannot fully feel its own importance without others' excessive admiration. A building, statue, or triumphal arch carved from stone or marble and inscribed with the leader’s name and, in some cases, like the Ara Pacis, their image, more closely matches their inner experience.

Having narcissistic traits does not always indicate that someone will seek leadership positions, and not all leaders are narcissistic. However, researchers have found that narcissism predicts who will emerge as a leader, largely because narcissists tend to display more extroversion (Grijalva et al., 2015). Narcissism also doesn’t positively correlate with good leadership, though narcissistic leaders tend to rate themselves as more effective than their colleagues do, convinced that they are, in fact, the only person for the job.

Confidence is attractive to many people, and the narcissist has confidence in spades. But in the case of leaders like Julius Caesar, Mussolini, Hitler, and Napoleon, history shows that grandiosity existed alongside a voracious need for empire expansion at any cost. The desire to conquer and literally mark the land with reminders of their impact through architecture and aesthetic modeling speaks to existing research: Grandiosity tends to predict who will climb to the top of the ladder. That said, many self-important people never reach notoriety worthy of architectural immortalization, but the grandiose among them will strive for it nonetheless.

Aesthetic narcissism is expressed on a spectrum, from subtle to glaring. In a 2008 study, Vazire and colleagues photographed 160 people against a blank wall and had seven observers rate each person’s narcissism from the photograph alone. Their ratings tracked participants’ actual narcissism scores about as well as those of friends who knew them. Women higher in narcissism tended to wear more makeup, men who wore glasses tended to score lower, and overall the clearest cues were expensive, stylish clothing and an appearance that took evident effort.

Similarly, since Chatterjee and Hambrick (2007) couldn’t hand CEOs narcissism inventories, they estimated narcissism from observable traits, including how prominently each CEO’s photograph appeared in the company’s annual report. CEOs who scored high took greater risks in business and, as a result, had bigger wins and bigger losses than those who didn’t, likely because of greater grandiosity. Later researchers have questioned how well these observed traits capture narcissism (Koch-Bayram & Biemann, 2020), although it’s telling that one of the first places they looked was the size of a leader’s own image.

For most narcissistic people, a leadership position, polished exterior, or prominent photograph must suffice to quell the ego’s need for external admiration. But for the most grandiose among them, only the largest and most impressive trophies will do. For the authoritarians and imperialists among them, their kingdoms reflected their ambition in no uncertain terms.

On its face, the architectural grandeur of the Republic was impersonal: stone and marble meant to outlive the one who commissioned it, without reflecting the leader’s vainglory. Imperialism reverses the calculation, so that the design itself is a direct reflection of the ego that envisioned it. Imperial projects tell a story of Herculean egoic breadth, with workforces and material costs to match the idealized vision of a capital built on the leader’s name.

The Arc de Triomphe is instructive on this point. Commissioned in 1806 by Napoleon to celebrate his victory at Austerlitz, the arch took 30 years to complete. However, since 1923, veterans have rekindled the eternal flame of the Unknown Soldier there each evening, without mentioning Napoleon. Despite the grandiose intentions behind their construction, monuments outlive the egos they were meant to memorialize and begin carrying meanings their patrons never intended. Some monuments are destroyed precisely because the people who inspired them are so dubious that only erasing them can cleanse the stains they left behind. This shows that institutions can outlast individual personalities, remaining resilient despite, and sometimes because of, the grandiose leaders who inspired them.

Whether it’s made visible through makeup, an impeccable wardrobe with all the right labels, a large glossy photograph in an annual report, an ornate mausoleum, or a triumphal arch, narcissism is legible in the physical world. Even without the psychological content that inspired the form, something in us recognizes superbia and philautia in our bosses, neighbors, favorite influencers, and politicians.

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