Marius Leckelt
Program director Agentic AI, RL training data & frontier model evaluation

My work helps AI labs, big tech, and enterprises train and evaluate models on complex, long-horizon tasks.

Training data, environments, and benchmarks for the tasks today’s models still struggle with.

New: the millionaire personality index. Answer the same items as the participants in my two studies of millionaires, and see how close your profile comes.

Take the quiz →

Career

Now

Program director at an AI startup — agentic AI, RL training data, and frontier model evaluation.

Before

AI consulting at Bain — took products from first concept through to live, then scaled them.

Before that

Academic research in personality psychology and psychometrics — how people differ, how to measure it, and what it means for their lives.

Research

2015–2023

Peer-reviewed work in personality psychology and psychometrics (narcissism, status, and wealth): how people differ, how to measure those differences well, and what they mean for careers and relationships.

1,569citations
18h-index
20i10-index
Google Scholar, updated weekly

Selected publications

  1. 2023
    Age differences in narcissism: A comprehensive study across eight measures and over 250,000 participants
    Weidmann, Chopik, … Leckelt, … Back · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
  2. 2022
    The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires
    Leckelt, König, Richter, Back & Schröder · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
  3. 2019
    The rich are different: Unravelling the perceived and self-reported personality profiles of high-net-worth individuals
    Leckelt, Richter, Schröder, Küfner, Grabka & Back · British Journal of Psychology
  4. 2018
  5. 2015
    Behavioral processes underlying the decline of narcissists’ popularity over time
    Leckelt, Küfner, Nestler & Back · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
In revision 1 item
  • Leckelt, M. , Schmukle, S. C., & Egloff, B. (in revision). Robust Worldwide Evidence that Economic Inequality is Associated with Risk-Taking .
2023 1 item
  • [PDF] Weidmann, R., Chopik, W. J., [...], Leckelt, M. , [...], & Back, M. D. (conditionally accepted). Age Differences in Narcissism: A Comprehensive Study Across Eight Measures and Over 250,000 Participants . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(6), 1277-1298.
2022 2 items
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , König, J., Richter, D., Schröder, C., & Back, M. D. (2022). The Personality Traits of Self-Made and Inherited Millionaires. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications , 9(94). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01099-3
  • [PDF] Grosz, M., Hartmann, I., Dufner, M., Leckelt, M. , Gerlach, T. M., Rauthmann, J. F., Denissen, J. J. A., Küfner, A. C. P., Back, M. D. (2022). A Process × Domain Assessment of Narcissism: The Domain-Specific Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire. Assessment, 29(7) , 1482-1495
2021 2 items
  • [PDF] Schregel, J. P., Leckelt, M. , & Zülch, H. (2021). Die Prognose von Erfolg und Misserfolg in der Bundesliga durch Machine Learning: Der FoMa Q-Score als intelligentes Steuerungsinstrument. Sciamus - Sport und Management, Jg. 2021, Nr. 4, S. 26-46 .
  • [PDF] Härtel, T. M., Leckelt, M. , Grosz, M. P., Küfner, A. C. P., Geukes, K., & Back, M. D. (2021). Pathways From Narcissism to Leadership Emergence in Social Groups. European Journal of Personality, 35(5) , 1-23
2020 3 items
  • [PDF] Grosz, M.P., Leckelt, M. , & Back, M. D. (2020). Personality predictors of social status attainment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 33 , 52-56
  • [PDF] Wehner, C., Maaß, U., Leckelt, M. , Back, M. D., & Ziegler, M. (2020). Validation of the Short Dark Triad in a German sample: Structure, nomological network, and an ultrashort version. European Journal of Psychological Assessment
  • [PDF] Mielke, I., Humberg, S., Leckelt, M. , Geukes, K., & Back, M. D. (in press). Do narcissists self-enhance? Disentangling the associations between narcissism and positive versus enhanced self-views across aspects of narcissism, content domains, and comparison criteria. Social Psychological and Personality Science
2019 5 items
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , Geukes, K., Küfner, A. C. P., Niemeyer, L. M., Hutteman, R., Osterholz, S., … & Back, M. D. (2019). A Longitudinal Field Investigation of Narcissism and Popularity Over Time: How Agentic and Antagonistic Aspects of Narcissism Shape the Development of Peer Relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46 , 643-659
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , Richter, D., Wetzel, E., & Back, M. D. (2019). Longitudinal Associations of Narcissism with Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Institutional Outcomes: An Investigation Using a Representative Sample of the German Population. COLLABRA: PSYCHOLOGY, 5(1):26
  • [PDF] Weber, S., Geukes, K., Leckelt, M. , & Back, M. D. (2019). The attractiveness of narcissists: Hard work or natural beauty?. Self & Identity, 20 (2), 235-267
  • [PDF] Mota, S., Leckelt, M. , Geukes, K., Humberg, S., Haffke, A., Schröder-Abé, M., Nestler, S., Schmukle, S., & Back, M. D. (2019). A Comprehensive Examination of Narcissists’ Self-Perceived and Actual Socioemotional Cognition Ability. COLLABRA: PSYCHOLOGY, 5(1): 6
  • [PDF] Grosz, M. P., Emons, W. H. M., Wetzel, E., Leckelt, M. , Chopik, W. J., Rose, N., & Back, M. D. (2019). A Comparison of Unidimensionality and Measurement Precision of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire. Assessment, 26 (2), 281-293.
2018 4 items
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , Richter, D., Schröder, C., Küfner, A. C. P., Grabka, M. M., & Back, M. D. (2018). The rich are different: Unraveling the perceived and self-reported personality profiles of high net-worth individuals. British Journal of Psychology , 110, 769-789
  • [PDF (paywalled)] Vecchione, M., Dentale, F., Graziano, M., Dufner, M., Wetzel, E., Leckelt, M. , & Back, M. D. (2018). An Italian validation of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ): Further evidence for a two-dimensional model of grandiose narcissism. Applied Psychology Bulletin, 66
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , Wetzel, E., Gerlach, T. M., Ackerman, R. A., Miller, J. D., Chopik, W. J., …, Back, M. D. (2018). Validation of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire short scale (NARQ-S) in convenience and representative samples. Psychological Assessment, 30 , 86—96
  • [PDF] [book chapter] Back, M.D., Küfner, A.C.P., & Leckelt, M. (2018). Early Impressions of Grandiose Narcissists: A Dual-Pathway Perspective. In A. D. Hermann, A. Brunell, & J. Foster (Eds.), The Handbook of trait narcissism: Key advances, research methods, and controversies (pp. 309—316). New York, NY: Springer
2017 2 items
  • [PDF] Mahmoodi, J., Leckelt, M. , van Zalk, M.W.H., Geukes, K., & Back, M. D. (2017). Big Data approaches in social and behavioral science: Four key trade-offs and a call for integration. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 18 , 57—62
  • [PDF] Nestler, S., Leckelt, M. , Back, M. D., von der Beck, I., Cress, U., & Oeberst, A. (2017). The production of scientific information on the internet using the example of Wikipedia [Produktion von naturwissenschaftlichen Informationen im Internet am Beispiel von Wikipedia]. Psychologische Rundschau, 68 , 172—176.
2016 2 items
  • [PDF] Wetzel, E., Leckelt, M. , Gerlach, T. J., & Back, M. D. (2016). Distinguishing subgroups of narcissists with latent class analysis. European Journal of Personality, 30 , 374—389
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , Back, M. D., Foster, J. D., Hutteman, R., Jaeger, G., McCain, J., Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2016). Entering adulthood in a recession tempers later narcissism—But only in men. Journal of Research in Personality, 60 , 8—11
2015 1 item
  • [PDF] Leckelt, M. , Küfner, A. C. P., Nestler, S., & Back, M. D. (2015). Behavioral processes underlying the decline of narcissists‘ popularity over time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109 , 856—871

Press

2015–2023

Coverage, interviews, and talks — largely about the millionaire and narcissism studies, which the press liked considerably more than I expected.

  • CNBC
  • FAZ
  • Die ZEIT
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung
  • Die Welt
  • Scientific American
  • Business Insider
  • Deutschlandfunk Nova
  • BPS Research Digest

Contact

Email is the quickest way to reach me.