Thinking Structurally About Narcissism: An Examination of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory and Its Components

Abstract

The Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI) is a self-report measure of the traits linked to grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, as well as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), from a five-factor model perspective (FFM). In the current studies, the factor structure of the FFNI was explored and the results supported the extraction of three factors: Antagonism (e.g., Arrogance), Neuroticism (e.g., Need for Admiration), and Agentic Extraversion (e.g., Authoritativeness). In Study 2, the FFNI factors manifested convergent validity with their corresponding Big Five domains and diverging relations with measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, NPD, and self-esteem. Ultimately, the FFNI factors help explicate the differences between various expressions of narcissism such that all are related to Antagonism but differ with regard to Neuroticism (relevant to vulnerable narcissism and NPD) and Agentic Extraversion (relevant to grandiose narcissism and NPD). The results also highlight the complex relation between self-esteem and the traits that comprise narcissism measures.

Etiology of Triarchic Psychopathy Dimensions in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

“…That is, beyond evidence from recent structural modeling work in humans indicating that “meanness operates as the ‘phenotypic glue’ that binds distinguishable facets of psychopathy together” (Drislane & Patrick, 2016), current study findings suggest that meanness may also be etiologically central to psychopathy, when considered as a broad trait dimension. This perspective is consistent in turn with the position of Miller and Lynam (2015), who argue that ‘antagonism’ is the central trait disposition underlying psychopathy as an omnibus condition, and with Patrick et al’s (2009) suggestion that meanness is the main source of overlap between subdimensions of psychopathy as it is commonly assessed in criminal offenders (cf.…”

“…Paralleling relations among the YPI-Tri scales, the CHMP-Tri’s Boldness scale correlates to a moderate positive degree with both its Meanness and Disinhibition scales. As described previously (Latzman et al, 2016), the intercorrelations among triarchic dimension scales vary depending on the items used to index the constructs, with boldness and disinhibition scales correlating more when each contains items related to sensation-seeking, a trait that encompasses facets related to both of these triarchic constructs (Benning, Patrick, Blonigen, Hicks, & Iacono, 2005; Drislane & Patrick, 2016). This appears to be true of the CHMP-Tri Boldness and Disinhibition, which contain items indicative of daring approach and restless novelty-seeking, respectively.…”

Emotion Recognition and Perspective Taking: A Comparison between Typical and Incarcerated Male Adolescents

“…While this issue requires further scrutiny in future studies, our results argue against the WISC/WAIS subscales scores playing a major role in the PT performances. This result is consistent with previous research suggesting that impairments in social-cognitive processes, such as PT, cannot be entirely explained by IQ levels [17,55,75,76]. The investigation of the relationships between the IQ, executive functions and PT in antisocial individuals is beyond the aims of the present study.…”

An Integrative Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the Hypomanic Personality Scale: Implications for Construct Validity

“…Ackerman et al (2011) reported a three-factor structure: Leadership/Authority (11 items; e.g., "am assertive"), Grandiose Exhibitionism (10 items; e.g., "like to be the center of attention"), and Entitlement/ Exploitativeness (four items; e.g., "insist on getting respect"). We focus on this structure because (a) Ackerman et al (2011) found it to be robust and provided strong evidence of the validity of these dimensions across four large samples and (b) scales based on this structure have been widely used recently (e.g., Ackerman & Donnellan, 2013;Maxwell et al, 2011;Miller et al, 2014Miller et al, , 2015.…”