Five-Factor Model Best Describes Narcissistic Personality Inventory Across Different Item Response Formats

Abstract

The objective of this research was to validate the Narcissistic Personality Inventory across different response formats, given that several factor structures were proposed, ranging from two to seven factors. The original forced-choice format of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory was given to 410 participants and a modified, i.e., Likert format was given to 423 participants from the general population, along with personality and other narcissism measures. The results showed that the five-factor model proposed by Ackerman et al. had the best model fit in both response formats and that a distinction between adaptive (Leadership, Vanity, and Superiority) and some aspects of maladaptive (Manipulativeness and Exhibitionism) narcissism factors could be established. However, the redundancy of items in certain factors could be problematic and further improvements of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory should include more indicators of some proposed factors, especially of Vanity.

Dimensionality of narcissism: a Bifactorial model of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory using single-stimulus response formats

“…Big Five personality traits were also assessed in Study 3, and the results were mostly consistent with previous studies (Ackerman et al, 2011;Dinić & Vujić, 2018), however the general factor plays a significant role in all big five traits except conscientiousness. Agreeableness was rather negatively associated with the general factor, and it was unrelated to the Entitlement/Exploitativeness specific factor, which is different from previous studies (eg.…”

“…Agreeableness was rather negatively associated with the general factor, and it was unrelated to the Entitlement/Exploitativeness specific factor, which is different from previous studies (eg. Ackerman et al, 2011;Dinić & Vujić, 2018). Negative emotionality on the other hand was negatively related to the general factor and positively to Entitlement/Exploitativeness which might also confirm, that this specific factor can be considered the maladaptive aspect of grandiose narcissism.…”

Addiction and the Dark Triad of Personality

“…The Dark Triad of personality—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (1)—attracted enormous research interest in the past decades. Given that the three traits are tied together by antagonism as a marker of emotionally cold interpersonal behavior (2), much of the pertinent literature focuses on intrinsically interpersonal topics such as workplace behavior, interpersonal attraction, or generally competitive contexts (3). The socially aversive, “dark” personality characteristics are partially related to short-term individual benefits in these contexts, such as vocational success [e.g., Ref.…”

Narcissistic Traits and Executive Functions

“…First, we administered the NPI ( Raskin and Hall, 1979 ), one of the most widely used narcissism inventories, especially in social psychology, but also in clinical studies (for review/meta-analyses, see Grijalva et al, 2015 ; Grijalva and Zhang, 2016 ). While initial studies suggested seven first-order components designated authority, exhibitionism, superiority, vanity, exploitativeness, entitlement and self-sufficiency ( Raskin and Terry, 1988 ), there has been a plethora of subsequent studies discussing the factor structure of the NPI across different cohorts and translations ( Emmons, 1984 ; Kansi, 2003 ; Barelds and Dijkstra, 2010 ; Ackerman et al, 2011 ; Braun et al, 2016 ; Dinic and Vujic, 2019 ), also with regards to binary vs. Likert scale response variants ( Boldero et al, 2015 ; Miller et al, 2018a , c ), cross-cultural aspects ( Zemojtel-Piotrowska et al, 2019 ), centrality/network structure ( Briganti and Linkowski, 2020 ) and the phenotype it characterises. We administered the NPI, using the German long version (40 items, forced-choice response format), which had been validated and studied in four large German samples, and from which the above subscales can be extracted ( Schütz et al, 2004 ).…”