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What Does the Narcissistic Personality Inventory Measure Across the Total Score Continuum?

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Abstract

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) is the most widely used measure of narcissism in the social-personality psychology literature. It contains 40 items that tap into a variety of traits that theoretically comprise narcissism, such as feelings of superiority and willingness to exploit others. Most researchers focus on the total score produced by the NPI and may logically assume that increments in total NPI score correspond with similar increments in underlying narcissism traits. However, research presented in this article suggests that the traits measured by the NPI do not increment at the same rate. Traits reflecting intrapersonally healthy qualities (e.g., leadership, superiority) increment most rapidly within the lower portions of the NPI total score continuum, whereas traits reflecting interpersonally harmful qualities (e.g., entitlement, exploitativeness) increment most rapidly within the upper portions of the NPI continuum. These differences have implications for the meaning of scores on the NPI and how they correlate with other variables. For example, we demonstrate that lower NPI scores best predict self-esteem and higher NPI scores best predict psychopathy.

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Notes

  1. A 5-point response scale was used in this study rather than the 9-point response scale used in Study 2.

  2. Item-level data for this measure became corrupted, which prevented us from computing reliability estimates. Previous studies, however, have demonstrated adequate reliability (Miller et al. 2008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL, 36688, USA

    Joshua D. Foster & Imani N. Turner

  2. Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16801, USA

    Levi K. Shiverdecker

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  1. Joshua D. Foster
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  2. Levi K. Shiverdecker
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Correspondence to Joshua D. Foster.

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Foster, J.D., Shiverdecker, L.K. & Turner, I.N. What Does the Narcissistic Personality Inventory Measure Across the Total Score Continuum?. Curr Psychol 35, 207–219 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9407-5

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