Abstract
For three decades, social-personality research on overt narcissism has relied almost exclusively on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). However, the NPI suffers from a host of psychometric and validity concerns that make composite NPI scores (summed across its subscales) difficult to interpret. The present studies propose that narcissistic characteristics tend to fall under two general clusters: grandiosity and entitlement. The studies show that measures of grandiosity and entitlement interact to predict scores on the NPI, controlling for gender, self-esteem, and basic personality (Study 1), but also that grandiosity and entitlement function independently with respect to mental health (Study 2) and ethical misconduct (Study 3). Together, these results challenge the view of overt narcissism as a unidimensional construct and underscore the importance of distinguishing between grandiose and entitled aspects of the narcissistic self-concept.
Highlights
For three decades, social-personality research on overt narcissism has relied almost exclusively on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI)
Grandiosity and entitlement accounted for unique variance in scores on the NPI, and they significantly interacted, such that the highest NPI scores were predicted by high scores on both grandiosity and entitlement; absent high grandiosity, entitlement was not strongly related to the NPI
This result shows that the NPI reflects more than just the grandiose sense of self-importance and special sense of entitlement that we have argued form the core of the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of the narcissism construct
Summary
Social-personality research on overt narcissism has relied almost exclusively on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) lists a grandiose sense of self-importance as the primary element of narcissism, along with an excessive need for the admiration of others, arrogance, a sense of “uniqueness” and entitlement, a lack of empathy, envy, and a tendency to exploit others Somewhat consistent with these defining characteristics, studies suggest that people with high scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1979) tend to react in self-serving and aggressive ways to self-esteem threats (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998) and exhibit excessive emotional volatility following positive and negative feedback (Rhodewalt & Morf, 1998). This scoring approach might be partly due to the generally poor reliability of the subscales, with alphas in large samples ranging from .42 to .75 (e.g., Trzesniewski, Donnellan, & Robins, 2008)
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