Entrepreneurial Finance, Crowdfunding, and Language

Narcissistic language and success 103

significance, (p-value < 0.01), and the value of R squared increased from 32%

to 37%, suggesting that these four observations were depressing our model,

making it fit worse than it otherwise would.

7.4 Conclusions and directions for future studies

This chapter argues about the role of one of the three personality traits

belonging to the ‘dark triad’ (James, 2015) – narcissism – and how its incorp-

oration into the language of entrepreneurial ventures may impact the latter’s

likelihood to succeed when raising funds from the crowd. We followed research

in the entrepreneurial literature (Wales et al., 2013; Butticè & Rovelli, 2020)

that has pointed to the positive eects of a narcissistic rhetoric or, in ge