Age and Gender Differences in Narcissism: A Comprehensive Study Across Eight Measures and Over 250,000 Participants

Abstract

Age and gender differences in narcissism have been studied often. However, considering the rich history of narcissism research accompanied by its diverging conceptualizations, little is known about age and gender differences across various narcissism measures. The present study investigated age and gender differences and their interactions across eight widely used narcissism instruments (i.e., Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale, Dirty Dozen, Psychological Entitlement Scale, DSM-IV NPD, Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire-Short Form, Single Item Narcissism Scale, and brief version of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory). The findings of Study 1 (N = 5,736) revealed heterogeneity in how strongly the measures correlated. Some instruments loaded clearly on one of three factors proposed by previous research (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, antagonism), while others cross- loaded across factors and in distinct ways. Cross-sectional analyses using each measure and meta-analytic results across all measures (Study 2) with a total sample of 270,029 participants suggest consistent linear age effects (random effects meta-analytic effect of r = -.104), with narcissism being highest in young adulthood. Consistent gender differences also emerged (random effects meta-analytic effect was -.079), such that men scored higher in narcissism than women. Quadratic age effects and age x gender effects were generally very small and inconsistent. We conclude that despite the various conceptualizations of narcissism, age and gender differences are generalizable across the eight measures used in the present study. However, their size varied based on the instrument used. We discuss the sources of this heterogeneity and the potential mechanisms for age and gender differences.

Investigating Lay Perceptions of Psychological Measures: A Registered Report

“…Social scientists have been referring to a looming measurement crisis in psychologyand beyond-because latent instruments manifest gender-and race-based biases (Azevedo et al, 2023;Barabas et al, 2014;Pérez and Hetherington, 2014), are non-invariant across socio demographics (Davis et al, 2016;Harper & Rhodes 2021;Hussey & Hughes, 2020;Pietryka and MacIntosh 2022), display poor psychometric validity properties (e.g., Hauwaert et al, 2018Hauwaert et al, , 2020, and instruments attempting to measure the same construct seldom do so successfully (e.g., Azevedo & Bolesta, 2022;Davis-Kean et al, 2019;Weidman et al, 2017;Weidmann et al, 2023). This is not to say measurement is doomed to fail but rather suggestive that over relying on the positivist quantitative approach to the validation of latent instruments can be limiting, providing only a part of a larger picture.…”

Exploring narcissism and human- and animal-centered empathy in pet owners

“…The demographic questionnaire assessed participants’ age, gender, ethnicity, and pet ownership history. In our analyses, we control for gender because women tend to have higher human- and animal-centered empathy than men ( Paul, 2000 ; Klein and Hodges, 2001 ; Serpell, 2004 ; Angantyr et al, 2011 ), men tend to be higher in narcissism than women ( Grijalva et al, 2015 ; Weidmann et al, 2023 ), and gender may be associated with differences in animal and pet attachment ( Vonk et al, 2016 ; pre-registered). Participants were asked questions about their pet ownership history [e.g., “Have you previously owned a dog (cat)?”].…”

Narcissistic Status Pursuit in Everyday Social Life: A Within-Person Process Approach to the Behavioral and Emotional Dynamics of Narcissism

“…In addition, both samples were mostly female and from Germany. Given potential gender (Weidmann et al, 2023) and cross-cultural differences in narcissism (Fatfouta et al, 2021;Wetzel et al, 2021), future work should investigate whether our findings apply to more heterogeneous samples.…”