Popular Media Criticism: Popularity and NarcissismThomas Freeman's Maxim article, "Here's Why Narcissists Have the Most number of friends,” states that “people with narcissistic personalities accumulate friends and admirers more quickly,” but that people with high emotional intelligence “gain greater popularity over time.” He goes on to briefly describe one study conducted in Poland in which groups of students took personality tests describing their levels of narcissism and emotional intelligence and “voted multiple times on who they liked best in each group, it was said that people with a highest level of narcissism had been listed as well-liked at the beginning of the study, but people with a high level of emotional intelligence became the most liked group members by the end of the study, which took place over the course of three months . Freeman then makes two deductions about the study: "one good thing is that people will eventually figure out who is capable of being a 'best friend for life,' but one bad thing is that narcissists prove incredibly persuasive and can easily assume leadership positions." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The article is terribly written. Initially, Freeman claims that narcissistic people “more quickly” gain the admiration of others. This is not worded correctly in reference to the rest of the article; Freeman is actually saying that narcissists are liked more than people who aren't narcissists at first, and then as time goes on, narcissists gradually make fewer friends. He also doesn't specify who narcissists are being compared to in this opening statement. Readers of the article would then form their own ideas and might assume that narcissists in this statement are being compared to people who are not narcissists or to emotionally intelligent people. People who read the Maxim article but not the cited study would be led to believe a false claim because the actual claim in the article is not clear or specific enough. Freeman should have been more specific in making his statement, and should not have included his personal implications on the study findings in reference to leadership positions for the sake of accuracy, since the study does not mention leadership positions as it refer to narcissism. The empirical research article conducted an observational study on formal study groups in Polish universities. Higher education institutions in Poland assign students to groups where they all have to take the same classes. The researchers involved in the study targeted these groups at the beginning of the semester, before the group members met, and then a second time after three months. At the beginning of the study, group members took personality tests measuring their levels of narcissism, emotional intelligence, explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem. All measures were based on a Likert scale format, except implicit self-esteem, which was measured by the size of participants' random handwritten signatures. They were also asked to list the group members they liked the most. The study then examined the interaction between narcissism, emotional intelligence, time and the number of “edges” sent or received, which refer to nominations made by group members. The number of edges received was compared between the first and second waves of the study in a two-way interaction..