"Your desk or mine?": narcissism predicts student-professor flirting frequency and perceptions of its appropriateness

Despite apparent scholarly and popular interest, the effects of narcissism levels in academia are understudied. Flirting among college students and professors has garnered great public interest yet received little research attention. The present study examined whether student narcissism levels can predict self-reports of flirting with professors, beliefs that professors and peers are flirting, and beliefs that flirting between students and professors is morally acceptable. Participants provided frequency estimates of flirting behaviors across three within-subjects factors: when referring to behavior of the self or a peer, when a student or a professor was the flirter, and when the flirting occurred in class or a professor's office. Grandiose narcissistic students rated flirty behavior as less atypical regardless of levels of the factors; however, vulnerable narcissistic students rated flirty behavior as less atypical when referring to a peer but not the self. Students higher in both forms of narcissism rated flirty behavior as less morally inappropriate regardless of levels of the factors. The findings offer novel insight into the consequences of narcissism in academic settings.