Learning from failure: do narcissists learn?

Abstract

We investigate the narcissists’ response to failure and whether narcissists effectively learn from this negative experience. To address this, we leverage data from a leading crowdfunding platform, and analyze 116,981 failed crowdfunding attempts. Our analysis shows a positive relationship between narcissism and the probability of relaunching which is negatively moderated by the degree of failure. Indeed, due to their fragility, narcissistic entrepreneurs are more likely to engage in ego-defensive behavior, and thus, they are less likely to relaunch following high degrees of failure. Moreover, narcissistic entrepreneurs exhibit poorer performance in their subsequent endeavors. This underperformance is driven by external attribution of failure and lower levels of pro-activity. In fact, following failure, narcissistic entrepreneurs are less likely to change internal factors that might contribute to their previous failure and they are more likely to respond to failure by reattempting in a different context. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.