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Replicable Factor Structure and Correlates of an Alternate Version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory

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Abstract

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) traditionally has been administered using 40 pairs of items with a forced-choice response format. However, recent NPI research indicates that it may be advantageous to administer only the item from each pair that is in the narcissistic, keyed direction (i.e., using a “single-stimulus” format) in conjunction with a Likert style response rating scale (Ackerman et al. 2016). This same research and other prior studies also suggest that the NPI items assess distinct grandiose narcissistic traits (e.g., manipulativeness, leadership), such that focusing solely on total scores for analyses may be problematic. We extend this previous work by examining the NPI’s factor structure and correlates in both clinically-oriented community (N = 700) and undergraduate (N = 527) samples when this measure is administered using a single-stimulus format and a Likert style rating scale. Our results indicated that five replicable NPI factors (i.e., Manipulativeness, Grandiose Fantasies, Vanity, Leadership/Authority, Superiority) could be identified across samples. Subscales modeling these factors showed distinctive patterns of personality and psychopathology relations. For example, some subscales (e.g., Leadership/Authority, Superiority) showed strong positive relations with agentic aspects of extraversion and robust negative relations with neuroticism, but other subscales (e.g., Manipulativeness, Grandiose Fantasies) showed comparatively weaker associations with these personality traits. These results highlight a potentially more useful administration format for the NPI, and also underscore need to consider the distinctive nature of NPI subscales in future research using this measure.

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Funding

This study was partially funded by University of Notre Dame Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, N6A 3K7, Canada

    Matthew F. D. Brown & Kasey Stanton

  2. Psychology Department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 121 Williams Hall, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

    Kasey Stanton

  3. Department of Psychology, The University of Notre Dame, 390 Corbett Family Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    David Watson

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  1. Matthew F. D. Brown
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  2. Kasey Stanton
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  3. David Watson
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Correspondence to Matthew F. D. Brown.

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Matthew F. D. Brown, Kasey Stanton and David Watson declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study.

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This research received approval from the University of Notre Dame Institutional Review Board. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Brown, M.F.D., Stanton, K. & Watson, D. Replicable Factor Structure and Correlates of an Alternate Version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 42, 69–85 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-020-09790-y

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