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.
一项新研究称，一个首席执行官的签名写得越大，他（她）是自恋狂的可能性越大。
该研究将605名美国公司的首席执行官的签名放在一起作比较，发现他们的签名大小确实关系重大。
研究发现，签名更大字的上司通常能得到最高的薪水，但事实上也更可能把公司搞垮。
北卡罗莱纳大学克南-弗拉格勒学院的学者的这项研究所采集的首席执行官签名来自他们提交到美国证券交易委员会的公司账目。
研究作者将自恋定义为“带有自负和漠视他人的”一种自我中心的性格特质。
他们在论文中写道：“同样，自恋会造成自我认知的偏差，具体表现形式是对个人自身能力和表现会有偏高的评价。”
研究称，这些特质会使他们做出不明智的决定，但也能使董事和股东信服他们的能力，发给他们更高的薪水。
王肖恩教授是该研究报告的三名作者之一，他告诉美国广播公司新闻网说，被用来分析的605个签名大部分是来自2011年7月标准普尔500强公司上交的年度报告和其他文件。
标准普尔500指数追踪记录美国最具价值的500家上市公司的数据。
这些签名被输入一个自定义编码的电脑程序里，该程序用矩形把每个签名框起来，然后测量矩形覆盖的范围。
王教授说：“我们按首席执行官签名中的字母数来划分区域，由此将测量标准化。”
王教授说，他和其他合著者借鉴了先前的心理学研究结果，那些研究称签名越大，本人越自大。
研究人员把签名大小作为签名者自恋心理的代表，发现自恋的首席执行官在资本支出和收购上投资更多，但分发的红利更少；在财务高度宽松时，他们的过度投资问题最严重。
autograph: 亲笔签名
run ... into the ground: 把……弄糟
proxy: 代表