The conceptualization and assessment of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism: An investigation of common and unique features

© 2015 Dr. Richard Clarke DaviesResearchers agree that there are two narcissism expressions, specifically grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. However, their assessment remains contentious. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Terry, 1988) assesses all aspects of grandiose narcissism for some whereas critics claim it assesses only ‘normal narcissism’. The alternative measure, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI; Pincus et al., 2009), is proposed to measure all aspects of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, including that which is clinically-significant, despite inconsistent evidence of the nature of its second-order factors and little empirical validation in clinical populations. The aim of the research reported in this thesis was to adapt the NPI and the PNI to provide more appropriate measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. This was investigated using four separate samples of university undergraduates. A total of 745 students completed a number of measures, including the NPI and PNI, along with self- esteem and Five-Factor personality measures. Additionally, one sample completed a lexical decision task designed to measure self-esteem indirectly (i.e., implicit self- esteem). As the focus of studies previously investigating how best to assess narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability has been on content that distinguishes each, there has been little exploration of which narcissism features are common to these expressions beyond the investigation of entitlement and exploitative tendencies. It is argued in this thesis that comprehensive assessment of the narcissism expressions involves the identification and measurement of both common and unique features of narcissism. The current research examined the items loading on the subscales of the NPI and PNI before using these adapted subscales to construct new measures of the narcissism expressions. Items measuring common features of narcissism were first identified and distinguished from those assessing unique features of the expressions using factor analyses. The results of these analyses were used to construct new measures. The associations of these measures with proposed correlates of narcissism were compared to those of the PNI grandiosity and vulnerability measures. Five separate studies were conducted. In Studies 1 and 2, the factor structures of the NPI and PNI were of interest because the results of previous studies have failed to replicate findings. Accordingly, these scales were submitted to exploratory factor analyses. In most cases, the original subscales of these measures reported by Raskin and Terry (1988) and Pincus and colleagues (2009), established using principal components analyses, were found. The NPI and PNI factors, established in Studies 1 and 2, were then used to compare models of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. One model used PNI subscales alone (i.e., the PNI grandiosity and vulnerabilit y scales), whilst a new model included NPI and PNI subscales to assess both common and unique features of the narcissism expressions. Studies 4 and 5 compared the relationships of both these new measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and the PNI’s second- order grandiosity and vulnerability factors with measures of implicit and explicit self- esteem and the Big-Five domains. The new measures yielded associations consistent with previous research of Five-Factor model personality domains that distinguish the expressions and also support a proposed moderation of explicit self-esteem by implicit self-esteem reflecting the mask model and inverted mask proposition of narcissism. On balance, predicted findings were more consistently found for the new measures than for the PNI grandiosity and vulnerability scales. Taken together, the results of this research program indicate that the newly-developed measures which consider common features at the core of narcissism are more appropriate measures of grandiosity and vulnerability than the PNI subscales. It is also concluded that both the NPI and the PNI are required to assess both narcissism expressions. Future research could further examine subsets of characteristics that distinguish the expressions within identified common features. For example, previous research (e.g., Besser & Priel, 2010; Raskin, Novacek, & Hogan, 1991b) suggests that the common feature of attention seeking, is expressed as a craving for admiration in narcissistic grandiosity but as a need for approval, in vulnerability. The new measures, using established NPI and PNI subscales, do not currently target such distinctions