Picture two employees stuck with the same monotonous spreadsheet task. One quietly checks out, watching the clock and daydreaming about lunch. The other digs in harder, treating the tedium as a test to be conquered. What separates them? A study of Hungarian workers points to personality, and the answer was not what the researchers expected.
Published in Current Psychology, the research set out to understand how three workplace ingredients fit together: narcissistic personality traits, perfectionism, and the everyday experience of boredom on the job. The headline result is an unexpected twist. Among people who scored high on one form of narcissism, boredom seemed to sharpen their drive toward high standards rather than dull it.
The question behind the study
Narcissism and perfectionism are often filed under the “darker” side of personality, both tied to difficult workplace behavior. But researchers have increasingly noticed that the picture is not so simple. The team behind this study, led by Janka Laura Marót of ELTE Eötvös Loránd University and Corvinus University of Budapest, along with colleagues Zsolt Péter Szabó and Réka Gulyás, wanted to know what connects these traits to actual behavior. When and why do people with narcissistic tendencies act in perfectionistic ways?
To follow the study, a few definitions help. Psychologists generally split narcissism into two flavors. Grandiose narcissism involves high self-esteem, assertiveness, and confident self-presentation. Vulnerable narcissism reflects insecurity, sensitivity to criticism, and defensiveness. Both share an inflated sense of self-importance and a hunger for outside approval, but they tend to play out differently at work.
Perfectionism also comes in two forms. Perfectionistic strivings means setting and chasing very high personal standards, a quality that can boost performance. Perfectionistic concerns means fear of failure and harsh self-criticism, which tends to drag down well-being. Prior research has linked grandiose narcissism to strivings and vulnerable narcissism to concerns.
The new piece in this study is workplace boredom, described as a low-energy, dissatisfied state that arises from understimulating tasks. Boredom is usually treated as a performance killer that nudges people to disengage. The researchers wanted to test whether boredom acts as a link between narcissism and perfectionism.
What the researchers predicted
Going in, the team expected a fairly intuitive pattern. People high in grandiose narcissism, they reasoned, might see routine tasks as beneath them and check out when things got dull. So they predicted that boredom would weaken the connection between grandiose narcissism and high personal standards. In other words, bored narcissistic employees would care less about doing things perfectly and would go looking for something more stimulating.
They also expected vulnerable narcissism to be tied to perfectionistic concerns and to higher levels of boredom.
How the study worked
The researchers surveyed 210 Hungarian employees online. The group included 64 men and 146 women, with an average age of about 37. Most held non-managerial roles, and the sample was relatively well educated. To qualify, participants had to have worked at the same company for at least six months and at least 20 hours a week.
Everyone completed three established questionnaires, with items reworded to fit a work setting. Narcissism was measured with the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, which captures both grandiose and vulnerable forms. Perfectionism was measured with the Short Almost Perfect Scale, separating high standards from self-critical concerns. Boredom was assessed using items from the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, asking about feelings like mind wandering, finding work meaningless, and time dragging.
The analysis combined correlations, regression models, and a statistical technique that tests whether one factor changes the strength of a relationship between two others. Here, the question was whether boredom shifted the connection between grandiose narcissism and perfectionistic strivings.
One caution worth stating up front: this was a snapshot taken at a single point in time. That design can reveal patterns and associations, but it cannot establish what causes what.
The surprising result
Some predictions held up. Grandiose narcissism was linked to higher perfectionistic strivings, and to more boredom and more perfectionistic concerns as well. Vulnerable narcissism was tied to perfectionistic concerns and to boredom, but showed no meaningful link to strivings. So far, consistent with earlier work.
The twist came with boredom’s role. The researchers had expected boredom to weaken the drive toward high standards in grandiose individuals. Instead, the opposite appeared. Among people high in grandiose narcissism, those who reported more boredom also reported the strongest pull toward perfectionistic strivings. People low in grandiose narcissism showed the reverse: more boredom went along with lower striving.
Breaking it down by boredom level made this clearer. When perceived boredom was high, grandiose narcissism was strongly tied to high standards. At average boredom, the link was weak and only marginal. At low boredom, the link essentially vanished.
The authors point out that the overall effect was modest, explaining a limited share of the differences in perfectionistic strivings. Still, the direction ran clearly counter to their hypothesis.
How the authors make sense of it
Because the data cannot pin down cause and effect, the researchers offer their explanation as one possibility rather than a settled conclusion. They suggest that, for people high in grandiose narcissism, boredom may act less like a reason to quit and more like a motivational cue. Enduring a dull stretch of work could become a way to prove competence and stand out from others.
The authors connect this to the idea that mastering a skill often demands grinding through repetitive, unstimulating practice. They quote the late basketball player Kobe Bryant on the value of embracing “those boring, agonizing moments.” A person motivated to see themselves as exceptional, the researchers argue, might reframe monotony as part of the path to recognition and even take pride in pushing through it.
The findings, they write, add to a growing body of evidence that grandiose narcissism is “not all dark.” The team is careful not to oversell this. They note that all forms of narcissism can create problems in workplaces where empathy and concern for others matter, which is “practically everywhere.” Their point is narrower: under certain conditions, grandiose narcissism may line up with productive behavior.
Possible takeaways and important limits
For managers and human resources teams, the authors suggest the results hint at a “personality-context fit” idea. Some roles involve monotony that cannot be designed away, but where long-term success brings prestige or influence. Matching people who can stay engaged through tedium to those roles might help reduce lost productivity. But the researchers stress that traits linked to persistence under boredom also come bundled with arrogance, hypercompetitiveness, and a resistance to feedback, so any such matching should sit alongside broader efforts to build motivation and a healthy work climate.
Several limits deserve attention. Beyond the snapshot design, all the measures were self-reported in a single sitting, which can inflate apparent connections. The boredom items did not cleanly separate momentary boredom from a person’s general tendency to feel bored. And the sample was mostly young, educated Hungarian women who reported low boredom overall, so what counted as “more boring” here may not reflect genuinely dull conditions. Whether the same pattern would surface in other populations or under truly tedious work remains, in the authors’ words, unclear.
The study also measured personal standards rather than actual output. As the team notes, high standards are only a proxy for real performance, which future research using longer-term and experimental designs could measure directly.
