研究：簽名越大的首席執行官越自戀

CEOs with big signatures are more likely to be narcissists

中國日報網 2013-02-16 08:40

Bold: Magnate Donald Trump's signature is seen scrawled at the bottom of this letter

The bigger a CEO's signature the more likely he or she is to be a narcissist, a new study claims.

The research which compared the signatures of some 605 CEOs of US firms found that size does matter where boss's autographs are concerned.

It found that bosses with bigger signatures also tended to get the highest pay, but were in fact more likely to run their companies into the ground.

The study by academics at the Feenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina took the signatures of CEOs from company accounts filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The authors identify narcissism as an egotistical character trait 'associated with conceit and disregard for others'.

'Similarly, narcissism creates biased self-perception in the form of upwardly biased evaluation of one’s own abilities and performance,' they say in the paper.

These qualities make them bad decision makers, the study says, but enables them to convince directors and shareholders of their competency to the extent that they get better pay.

Professor Sean Wang, one of three authors of the study, told ABC News that the 605 signatures analysed were found largely on annual reports and other documents filed by S&P 500 companies as of July 2011.

The S&P 500 index tracks the most valuable 500 companies listed on US stock markets.

Signatures were fed into a custom coded computer program which drew a rectangle around each of them and measured the area they covered.

'We standardized the measure by dividing the area by the number letters in the CEO's signature,' Professor Wang said.

Professor Wang said he and his co-authors relied on findings from previous psychological studies which claimed that bigger signatures mean bigger egos.

Using the size of the signature as a proxy for the writers' narcissism, they found that narcissistic CEOs invest more in capital expenditures and acquisitions but pay lower dividends, with overinvestments being largest in magnitude when financial slack is high.

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(Source: Dailymail)

一項新研究稱，一個首席執行官的簽名寫得越大，他（她）是自戀狂的可能性越大。

該研究將605名美國公司的首席執行官的簽名放在一起作比較，發現他們的簽名大小確實關系重大。

研究發現，簽名更大字的上司通常能得到最高的薪水，但事實上也更可能把公司搞垮。

北卡羅萊納大學克南-弗拉格勒學院的學者的這項研究所采集的首席執行官簽名來自他們提交到美國證券交易委員會的公司賬目。

研究作者將自戀定義為“帶有自負和漠視他人的”一種自我中心的性格特質。

他們在論文中寫道：“同樣，自戀會造成自我認知的偏差，具體表現形式是對個人自身能力和表現會有偏高的評價。”

研究稱，這些特質會使他們做出不明智的決定，但也能使董事和股東信服他們的能力，發給他們更高的薪水。

王肖恩教授是該研究報告的三名作者之一，他告訴美國廣播公司新聞網說，被用來分析的605個簽名大部分是來自2011年7月標準普爾500強公司上交的年度報告和其他文件。

標準普爾500指數追蹤記錄美國最具價值的500家上市公司的數據。

這些簽名被輸入一個自定義編碼的電腦程序里，該程序用矩形把每個簽名框起來，然后測量矩形覆蓋的范圍。

王教授說：“我們按首席執行官簽名中的字母數來劃分區域，由此將測量標準化。”

王教授說，他和其他合著者借鑒了先前的心理學研究結果，那些研究稱簽名越大，本人越自大。

研究人員把簽名大小作為簽名者自戀心理的代表，發現自戀的首席執行官在資本支出和收購上投資更多，但分發的紅利更少；在財務高度寬松時，他們的過度投資問題最嚴重。

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（中國日報網英語點津陳丹妮編輯：Julie）

Vocabulary:

autograph: 親筆簽名

run ... into the ground: 把……弄糟

proxy: 代表

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