Explicit measures of individual narcissism

Researchers have designed a variety of instruments to measure levels of narcissism.  For example,

• some instruments assess the degree to which individuals demonstrate grandiose narcissism—or the tendency of some people to exaggerate their achievements and capabilities as well as to crave attention or respect,
• other instruments assess the extent to which individuals demonstrate vulnerable narcissism—or the tendency of some people not only to dismiss criticism but to exhibit contempt or rage towards anyone who delivers this criticism as well as to depict themselves as victims of injustice,
• some instruments assess distinct facets or features of narcissism, such as need for admiration, entitlement, and exhibitionism.

A typical example

Many researchers have developed scales that measure grandiose narcissism.  To illustrate, Foster et al. (2015) designed and validated the Grandiose Narcissism Scale, comprising 33 items.  These items measure overall grandiose narcissism as well as several subscales:

• authority or the preference to be designated authority, such as “I am a natural born leader” or “I lead rather than follow”,
• self-sufficiency or a preference to complete tasks alone, such as “I do not like to depend on other people to do things”,
• superiority or a feeling they are better than other people, such as “I am more talented than most other people”,
• vanity or an obsession with physical appearance, such as “My looks are important to me”,
• exhibitionism or a need to attract the attention of people, such as “I do things that get people to notice me”,
• entitlement or the sense they deserve special treatment, such as “I expect to be treated better than average”, and
• a willingness to exploit other people, such as “I’m willing to manipulate others to get what I want”. 

As evidence of validity, overall grandiose narcissism, derived from combining these subscales, was positively associated with extraversion, a feeling of agency, and aggression as well as negatively associated with agreeableness and empathy.

The Narcissism Personality Inventory

In essence, the Grandiose Narcissism Scale is a shortened version of a previous instrument, called the Narcissism Personality Inventory, briefly outlined by Raskin and Hall (1979).  Indeed, many, if not most, measures of grandiose narcissism emanated from this seminal Narcissism Personality Inventory or NPI.    Unlike the Grandiose Narcissism Scale, the Narcissism Personality Inventory comprises 223 items.  Each of these items comprise two statements, only one of which epitomises narcissism, such as

• I really like to be the centre of attention
• It makes me uncomfortable to be the centre of attention.

Subsequently, one of the developers of this Narcissism Personality Inventory, Robert Raskin, and another collaborator, Howard Terry, designed a shortened version of this inventory, comprising only 40 pairs of statements (Raskin & Terry, 1988).  This version is called the NPI-40 and also gauges seven facets, such as authority, self-sufficiency, superiority, vanity, exhibitionism, entitlement, and the inclination to exploit people.

Other shortened versions

Other researchers have developed even shorter versions of the Narcissism Personality Inventory. Ames et al. (2006), for example, devised a variant of the Narcissism Personality Inventory that comprises only 16 items.  Unlike other variants, this shorter variant, called the NPI-16, corresponds to only facet or factor.  For each item, participants choose which of two statements describe their character, such as

• “I like to be the centre of attention” versus “I prefer to blend in with the crowd”,
• “I am an extraordinary person” versus “I am much like everybody else”,
• “I always know what I am doing” versus “Sometimes I am not sure of what I am doing”,
• “I like having authority over people” versus “I don’t mind following orders”.

The NPI-16 and NPI-40 generate similar correlations to other measures.  For example,

• they both are positively and moderately associated with openness-to experience, extraversion, and self-esteem
• they both are negatively and moderately associated agreeableness and neuroticism.

A shortened variant with three sub-scales

Gentile et al. (2013) later developed another shortened version, comprising only 13 items, that also generates three subscales.  This version appears to be valid, correlating with the same traits as did the NPI-16 and NPI-40—such as diminished levels of agreeableness, psychopathy, attention seeking, dominance, coldness, and aggression in response to electric shocks.  The three subscales were

• leadership and authority, such as “People always seem to recognise my authority”,
• grandiose exhibitionism, such as “I like to look at my body”, and
• entitlement and inclination to exploit people, such as “I find it easy to manipulate people”.

The first two subscales were significantly associated with traits that epitomise grandiose narcissism.  The third subscale, around entitlement and exploitation, was significantly associated with antagonism—a tendency that is common in both grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism. 

The hypersensitive narcissism scale

To measure vulnerable narcissism, many researchers deploy the hypersensitive narcissism scale (Hendin & Cheek, 1997), developed at Wellesley College in Massuchusetts.  This scale comprises the following 10 items:

• I can become entirely absorbed in thinking about my personal affairs, my health, my cares or my relations to others.
• My feelings are easily hurt by ridicule or by the slighting remarks of others.
• When I enter a room, I often become self-conscious and feel that the eyes of others are upon me.
• I dislike sharing the credit of an achievement with others.
• I dislike being with a group unless I know that I am appreciated by at least one of those present.
• I feel that I am temperamentally different from most people.
• I often interpret the remarks of others in a personal way.
• I easily become wrapped up in my own interests and forget the existence of others.
• I feel that I have enough on my hands without worrying about other people’s troubles.
• I am secretly ‘‘put out’’ when other people come to me with their troubles, asking me for my time and sympathy.

As evidence of discriminant validity, this measure hardly correlates at all with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory—a measure of grandiose narcissism.   Furthermore, as evidence of validity, hypersensitive narcissism is positively associated with neuroticism but inversely associated with extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience.ay not acknowledge or even be aware of this tendency.  Consequently, the items did not refer to humility explicitly.  In addition, some of the items depicted characteristics, such as “I feel that I do not deserve more respect than other people”, that people who are not humble would be unwilling to concede, even if they wanted to depict themselves favourably.

Whereas some instruments measure either grandiose or vulnerable narcissism, other instruments measure both of these facets.  One possible example is the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire, developed by Back et al. (2013). Specifically, according to Back et al.,

• to boost their status, some individuals apply strategies that attract respect and admiration, such as inflate their achievements, sometimes called self-enhancement,
• in contrast, to maintain their status, other individuals apply strategies that denigrate other people—such as people who criticise their behaviour—sometimes called self-protection.

To represent these two strategies, respectively called narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry, Back et al. developed an instrument that comprises 18 items (for a shorter version, see Leckelt et al., 2018). Narcissistic admiration comprises three distinct facets:

• grandiosity, such as “I deserve to be seen as a great personality”,
• uniqueness, such as “Being a very special person gives me a lot of strength”, and
• charming-ness, such as “I manage to be the centre of attention with my outstanding contributions”.

Similarly, narcissistic rivalry comprises three distinct facets as well, including

• devaluation, such as “Most people are somehow losers”,
• supremacy, such as “I want my rivals to fail”, and
• aggressiveness, such as “I react annoyed if another person is at the centre of events”.

Narcissistic admiration and rivalry were positively associated with each other. To explain this association, one possibility is that narcissistic admiration may precede narcissism rivalry.  Specifically, individuals who exhibit narcissistic admiration may, after they attract some respect, typically by inflating their qualities or contributions, feel this admiration is fragile.  To maintain this status, these individuals may then feel compelled to defend their rank in a competitive, hostile social environment, manifesting as narcissistic rivalry.  

As Back et al. (2013) also revealed, narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry were both associated with the big five personality traits. Specifically, narcissistic admiration was positively associated with extraversion and openness to experience as well as inversely associated with neuroticism.  In contrast, narcissistic rivalry was positively related to neuroticism and inversely related to agreeableness and conscientiousness.  Furthermore, narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry were positively and negatively associated with self-esteem respectively.  Finally, both dimensions were positively associated with a measure of psychopathy but only narcissistic rivalry was positively associated with a measure of Machiavellianism.

A further study, also conducted by Back et al. (2013), explored the association between these narcissistic dimensions and relationships.  Narcissistic rivalry was inversely related to empathy, trust, forgiveness, and gratitude in relationships—as well as a tendency to seek revenge in response to transgressions.  In contrast, narcissistic admiration was not as strongly related to these measures.

Grandiose versus vulnerable narcissism

Originally, both narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry were deemed as facets of grandiose narcissism (Back et al., 2013; for a similar assumption, see Biolik, 2025).  Maples et al. (2025), however, revealed that narcissistic admiration tends to coincide with grandiose narcissism and narcissistic rivalry tends to coincide with vulnerable narcissism. This study administered a series of questionnaires to three samples of participants. These questionnaires included

• the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire,
• the Narcissism Grandiosity Scale to assess grandiose narcissism,
• the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale to assess vulnerable narcissism,
• the Pathological Narcissism Inventory—to gauge more pathological or extreme signs of narcissism,
• other scales including measures of personality, aggression, and self-esteem.

The data were subjected to a series of techniques, including latent profile analysis and structural equation modelling.  In essence, the findings revealed that

• narcissistic admiration tends to coincide with measures of grandiose narcissism, such as the Narcissism Grandiosity Scale, as well as high extraversion and low neuroticism,
• narcissistic rivalry tends to coincide with measures of vulnerable narcissism, such as the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale as well as high neuroticism, high aggression, and low self-esteem.

One concern with previous models is the degree to which they apply to multiple nations and cultures.  To address this matter, Sivanathan et al. (2021, 2023, 2025) proposed the unified model of narcissism.  This model recognises that several characteristics, such as a sense of entitlement and the ensuing antagonism towards other people, are common to both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism.  However, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism also comprise unique features that are common across cultures.  Specifically, the universal features of grandiose narcissism are

• leadership—a facet that entails a sense of superiority and a tendency to overestimate personal qualities and contributions,
• vanity—or an undue emphasis on physical appearance or other superficial qualities.

In contrast, the universal features of vulnerable narcissism are

• contingent self-esteem—in which individuals seek validation from other people excessively and derive their worth from this validation,
• hiding personal needs, including shame or fear their personal thoughts or feelings may be rejected,
• grandiose fantasy—or a preoccupation with power, achievement, and admiration.

According to Sivanathan et al. (2025), all five facets contribute to a sense of entitlement.  To illustrate

• because of their sense of leadership, narcissistic individuals feel they should be entitled to be granted authority over other people,
• because of their vanity, narcissistic individuals feel they are entitled to receive admiration,
• because their self-esteem is contingent upon validation, narcissistic individuals feel should be entitled to receive praise,
• because they hide personal needs, narcissistic individuals feel they should be admired because of the thoughts or feelings they express,
• because of grandiose fantasy, narcissistic individuals feel they should be respected because of their imagined success or power.

To represent these five facets, Sivanathan et al. (2025) developed a shortened version of their previous unified narcissism scale.  The scale comprises 15 items, 3 items representing contingent self-esteem, leadership, grandiose fantasy, vanity, and hiding personal needs in order.   

• [Contingent self-esteem] When others don’t notice me, I start to feel worthless
• When people don’t notice me, I start to feel bad about myself.
• I spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think of me.
• [Leadership] As a leader, I know what is best for my team.
• If I became a leader, I would be the best.
• I have better leadership skills than other people.
• [Grandiose Fantasy] I want to amount to something in the eyes of the world.
• I often fantasize about being admired and respected.
• I fantasize about being a hero.
• [Vanity] I think I turn heads when I walk down the street.
• I am exceptionally good looking.
• I enjoy taking photos of myself because I look so good.
• [Hiding One’s Needs] It’s hard to show others the weaknesses I feel inside.
• I would feel so ashamed if someone found out all parts of me.
• I become a different person when I am with others for fear of disapproval.

Confirmatory factor analysis validated these sub-scales in four nations: United States, China, Sri Lanka, and Australia.  Grandiose narcissism was lowest in Australia, potentially because Australians tend to be especially resistant to hierarchy.   

Some measures and taxonomies of narcissism emanate from the five-factor model of personality. According to the five-factor model of personality, the entire gamut of personality characteristics can be reduced to one of five key traits: extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience.  If this model is accurate, each facet of neuroticism should also correspond to one of these five traits (Miller et al., 2016). 

Overview of the five-factor model

The five traits were initially derived from attempts to categorise the adjectives that are commonly used to describe individuals but later verified and refined using factor analyses, a statistical technique that is conducted to identify sets of correlated dimensions.  Each of these five traits tend to comprise six distinct but underlying facets (Costa & McCrae, 1992):

• To illustrate, individuals who exhibit extraversion are gregarious, assertive, warm, positive, and active, as well as seek excitement.
• The six facets that underpin neuroticism, as defined by Costa and McCrae (1992), relate to the extent to which individuals exhibit anxiety, depression, and hostility as well as feel self-conscious, act impulsively, and experience a sense of vulnerability, unable to accommodate aversive events.
• The six facets that underpin agreeableness are trust in other individuals, straightforward and honest communication, altruistic and cooperative behaviour, compliance rather than defiance, modesty, as well as tender, sympathetic attitudes.
• The six facets that correspond to conscientiousness relate to the degree to which individuals are competent, methodical–preferring order and structure, dutiful, motivated to achieve goals, disciplined, and deliberate or considered.
• Finally, openness to experience relates the extent to which individuals are open to fantasies, aesthetics, feelings, as well as novel actions, ideas, and values (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Open individuals prefer novel, intense, diverse, and complex experiences (McCrae, 1996). In contrast, closed individuals prefer familiar tasks and standardized routines (McCrae, 1996).

The original measure of the five-factor model of narcissism: the five-factor narcissism inventory

These facets of the five personality traits have informed several measures of narcissism. For example, Glover et al. (2012) constructed a measure that is predicated on the assumption that narcissism corresponds to maladaptive variants of these facets.  Specifically, these researchers identified 15 facets of the five-factor model that can be adapted to characterise features of narcissism. 

To illustrate, consider one facet of neuroticism, called angry hostility.  Individuals who exhibit narcissism might display a maladaptive variant of this facet, in which they explode in anger whenever they are criticised or slighted.  The researchers then constructed 30 questions to characterise this maladaptive variant of angry hostility, called reactive anger. 

Similarly, the researchers uncovered 14 other maladaptive variants of the five-factor model that may characterise narcissism—and then wrote about 30 items to measure each facet.  These facets, coupled with a sample item, include

• reactive anger (e.g., “I have, at times, gone into a rage when not treated rightly”),
• shame (e.g., “When I realize I have failed at something, I feel humiliated”),
• indifference (e.g., “Others’ opinions of me are of little concern to me”),
• need for admiration (e.g., “I want so much to be admired by others”),
• exhibitionism (e.g., “I enjoy being in front of an audience or big crowd”),
• thrill-seeking (e.g., “I like to have new and exciting experiences, even if they are a little frightening”),
• authoritative (e.g., “I tend to take charge of most situations”),
• grandiose fantasies (e.g., “I daydream about someday becoming famous”),
• cynicism or distrust (e.g., “You have to look out for your own interests because no one else will”),
• manipulativeness (e.g., “I will mislead people if I think it is necessary”),
• exploitative (e.g., “If people are ignorant enough to let me take advantage of them, so be it”),
• entitlement (e.g., “I believe I am entitled to special accommodations”)
• arrogance (e.g., “I only associate with people of my calibre”),
• lack of empathy (e.g., “I’m not big on feelings of sympathy”),
• acclaim-seeking (e.g., “I have devoted my life to success”).

Each subscale roughly overlaps with one of the five personality traits. To illustrate,  

• high levels of neuroticism—one of the five personality traits—correspond to four of the subscales: reactive anger, shame, indifference, and need for admiration,
• high levels of extraversion correspond to three subscales: authoritativeness, exhibitionism, and thrill seeking,
• high levels of openness correspond to one subscale: grandiose fantasies,
• low levels of agreeableness correspond to six subscales: arrogance, cynicism or distrust, entitlement, exploitative-ness, limited empathy, and manipulativeness,
• high levels of conscientiousness correspond to one subscale: acclaim seeking.

To validate this measure, 333 undergraduate psychology students, enrolled at the University of Kentucky, completed this inventory of 390 items as well as

• the NEO personality inventory-revised to gauge the five personality traits,
• the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to measure grandiose narcissism,
• the Hypersensitivity Narcissism Scale to measure vulnerable narcissism,
• the Pathological Narcissism Inventory to assess more pathological levels of narcissism,
• a validity scale to verify that participants were answering the questions carefully, such as “I have used computers in the past two years”,
• the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory–III to assess personality disorders (Millon et al., 2009),
• as well as other measures of personality disorders (e.g., Bagby & Farvolden, 2004; Simms & Clark, 2006).

The findings attest to the validity of this scale.  For example,

• the 15 facets of this five-factor narcissism inventory were highly correlated with the corresponding facets of the NEO personality inventory-revised,
• one exception is that grandiose narcissism, a facet of the five-factor narcissism inventory, was not significantly associated with the corresponding openness to fantasy facet, contrary to hypotheses,
• the 15 facets were only modestly associated with each other, consistent with the assumption that narcissism is not homogenous but comprises a set of distinct maladaptive tendencies (Widiger & Trull, 2007),
• the facets were associated with other measures of narcissism, as predicted.

Additional research has also validated this instrument (e.g., Miller et al., 2013; for a shorter variant, see Sherman et al., 2015).   Each subscale also coincides with either grandiose narcissism or vulnerable narcissism.  Researchers can, therefore, derive a score for grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism from this scale.

Agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism

As Miller et al. (2016) subsequently revealed, this instrument primarily represents high or low levels of three personality traits in particular:

• elevated levels of extraversion, such as authoritativeness,
• very low levels of agreeableness, such as arrogance.
• elevated levels of neuroticism, such as reactive anger, and

Therefore, although derived from the five-factor model of personality, these findings indicate that narcissism may comprise three key factors, often called the three-factor model or trifurcated model of narcissism.  After more detailed analyses and research, the definition of these three factors has gradually evolved (Miller et al., 2021; Weiss et al., 2019).  Specifically, these three factors are usually labelled

• agentic narcissism, representing extraverted traits such as assertiveness, leadership, and grandiosity,
• antagonistic narcissism represented limited agreeableness, including deceit, distrust, or limited empathy, and
• neurotic narcissism, manifesting as hypersensitivity and shame, for example.

Agentic narcissism tends to correspond to grandiosity, neurotic narcissism tends to correspond to vulnerability, and antagonistic narcissism tends to correspond to both grandiosity and vulnerability (Miller et al., 2021; Weiss et al., 2019).  This premise, therefore, shows how the five-factor model coalesces with the distinction between grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism.

Correlates of agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism

Agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism also seem to affect the emotions that people experience.  For example, in one study that Rogoza, Rogoza, et al. (2025) conducted, Polish adults completed two sets of measures.  First, to assess narcissism, participants indicated the extent to which 41 adjectives depict their characteristics.  These adjectives were derived from the

• Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale (Crowe et al., 2016) to measure agentic narcissism and included words like brilliant, glorious, powerful, and prestigious,
• Narcissistic Antagonism Scale (Rogoza, Baran, et al., 2025) and included words like abusive, nasty, exploitative, and depreciating,
• Narcissistic Vulnerability scale (Crowe et al., 2018) and included words like ignored, resentful, misunderstood, and underappreciated.

Second, to assess trait emotions, participants completed the Differential Emotions Scale (see Izard, 1992), in which they specified the frequency with which they experience 12 emotions in daily life.  These emotions can be classified into agentic emotions, such as interest and joy, antagonistic emotions, such as anger and contempt, as well as neurotic emotions, such as sadness, fear, shame, and guilt.  Finally, to assess state emotions, participants indicated, once a night across seven days,  the degree to which they experienced these emotions during the day. To analyse the data, the researchers explored the correlations between narcissism and emotions as well as conducted Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (Asparouhov et al., 2018).  These analyses revealed that

• agentic narcissism was positively associated with both agentic emotions as well as antagonistic emotions,
• antagonistic narcissism was positively associated with antagonistic emotions,
• neurotic narcissism was positively associated with both neurotic emotions as well as antagonistic emotions,
• if participants reported agentic narcissism, neurotic emotions did not last over multiple days; if participants reported neurotic narcissism, unpleasant emotions did last over multiple days.

These results are consistent with the premise that all variants of narcissism tend to elicit antagonistic feelings, such as contempt, but only agentic narcissism elicits agentic emotions and only neurotic narcissism elicits neurotic emotions. 

Shortened variants of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory

A few years later, Sherman et al. (2015) designed and validated a shortened version of this instrument, comprising 60 items but assessing the same 15 facets.  To validate this instrument, the researchers administered the tool to distinct samples, including undergraduate students, a clinical sample, and users of Amazon Mechanical Turk.  In general, compared to the original version, the shorter version generated similar correlations with personality, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, and other psychopathologies.   

Subsequently, West et al. (2021) constructed and substantiated the most concise version of the five-factor narcissism inventory.  This version comprises one item for each of the 15 facets.  To construct this version,  four samples of participants—591 users of Amazon Mechanical Turk, another 633 users of Amazon Mechanical Turk, 1009 psychology students from one American university, and 408 students from another university—completed the shortened version of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory as well as other measures of narcissism.   Next,

• the researchers subjected the responses to factor analysis—a factor analysis that uncovered three factors, corresponding to agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic narcissism respectively,
• the researchers then extracted the item from each facet that loads highest on the corresponding factor. 

Four of the items correspond to agentic narcissism:

• “I am comfortable taking on positions of authority”, to measure authoritativeness,
• “I often fantasise about having lots of success and power”, to measure grandiose fantasies,
• “I aspire for greatness”, to gauge acclaim-seeking,
• “I love to entertain people”, to assess exhibitionism

Eight of the items correspond to antagonistic narcissism:

• “When someone does something nice for me, I wonder what they want from me”, to measure distrust,
• “I don’t worry about others’ needs”, to assess limited empathy,
• “I’m pretty good at manipulating people”, to gauge manipulativeness,
• “I hate being criticised so much that I can’t control my temper when it happens”, to measure reactive anger,
• “I will try almost anything to get my ‘thrills’”, to gauge thrill-seeking,
•  “I do not waste my time hanging out with people who are beneath me”, to measure arrogance,
• “It may seem unfair, but I deserve extra, such as attention, privileges, or rewards”, to assess entitlement,
• “I’m willing to exploit others to further my own goals”, to measure exploitation.

Finally, three of the items correspond to neurotic narcissism:

• “When people judge me, I just don’t care”, to gauge indifference—an item that is inversely associated with neurotic narcissism,
• “I feel ashamed when people judge me”, to measure shame, and
•  “I wish I didn’t care so much about what others think of me”, to gauge need for admiration.

The findings confirmed the validity of this instrument.  For example, both this instrument, comprising 15 items, and the longer variant, comprising 60 items, produced similar correlations with other measures of narcissism.

Introduction

Measures of narcissism are usually long, typically gauging multiple facets.  However, researchers have also developed short measures.  These short measures are not as valid or informative but useful in many circumstances such as when

• researchers or practitioners want to measure levels of narcissism in the same people at many times,
• the participants cannot readily concentrate for more than a few seconds, because of personal deficiencies or challenging circumstances.

A single-item measure of narcissism

To illustrate a short measure, Konrath et al. (2014) proposed that one item may be sufficient to assess narcissism, at least to a reasonable extent.  Specifically, participants are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with one statement on a seven-point scale, ranging from not very true of me to very true of me.  The statement is “I am a narcissist.  Note the term narcissist means egotistical, self-focused, and vain”.  Across 11 studies, the researchers discovered that

• responses to this item and responses to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, one of the longest measures of grandiose narcissism, generated a correlation of .40,
• similarly, responses to this item were positively associated with most of the subscales of this inventory too, such as vanity, exhibitionism, exploitative-ness, authority, superiority, and entitlement. 
• the correlation between responses to this item and a measure of social desirability bias was modest, at r = -23.
• whereas the Narcissistic Personality Inventory was positively associated with irritability and hostility, the single-item measure was also positively associated with shame and fear; accordingly, only the single-item measure appears to coincide with both grandiosity and vulnerability,
• response to this item at one time and responses to this item ten days later generated a correlation of .79, indicating excellent stability over time,
• responses to this item were positively associated with extraversion and inversely associated with agreeableness.

A short measure of agentic narcissism

As research on the five-factor model of narcissism has identified, narcissistic tendencies can be divided into three main dimensions: agentic narcissism, partly associated with features of extraversion, antagonistic narcissism, associated with features of low agreeableness, and neurotic narcissism, partly associated with features of neuroticism.  Crowe et al. (2016) validated a short measure, called the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale, to gauge one of these dimensions: agentic narcissism.  Specifically, participants rate, on a 9-point scale, the extent to which they demonstrate six adjectives: glorious, prestigious, acclaimed, prominent, high-status, and powerful.  As evidence of validity, agentic narcissism, as gauged by these six adjectives, was

• strongly associated with traits that correspond to the DSM V, such as antagonism, grandiosity, attention seeking, and callousness, as measured by the Personality Inventory for DSM–5 (Krueger et al., 2012),
• strongly related to low levels of agreeableness and high levels of extraversion, as measured by the NEO personality inventory revised,
• strongly associated with other measures of grandiose narcissism but only modestly or negligibly associated with measures of vulnerable narcissism.

A short measure of antagonistic narcissism

Similar to the short measure of agentic narcissism, Rogoza, Baran, et al. (2025) developed a short measure of antagonistic narcissism.  To complete this scale, participants specify, on a 9-point scale, the degree to which various adjectives, such as abusive or nasty, describe their character or inclinations.  Although the scale usually comprises 18 adjectives, Rogoza, Baran, et al. (2025) revealed that researchers could administer a scale that comprises only four adjectives—abusive, nasty, exploitative, and depreciating—to gauge state narcissism.  To illustrate, in one study, every day, over a month, 317 adults indicated the extent to which they perceived themselves as

• abusive, nasty, exploitative, and depreciating to measure antagonistic narcissism,
• brilliant, glorious, powerful, and prestigious to measure agentic narcissism,
• ignored, resentful, misunderstood, and underappreciated to measure neurotic narcissism.

As a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis revealed (Lüdtkeet al., 2007), each set of adjectives were indeed related to three distinct factors.  This study thus confirms these 12 items represent three distinct characteristics, labelled as antagonistic, agentic, and neurotic narcissism, respectively.

A short measure of neurotic narcissism

Like the short measure of agentic narcissism, Crowe et al. (2018) also designed and validated a short measure of neurotic narcissism, called the Narcissistic Vulnerability scale.  To complete this scale, participants indicate, on a 9-point scale, the degree to which 11 adjectives—ashamed, ignored, self-absorbed, fragile, underappreciated, envious, resentful, insecure, irritable, misunderstood, and vengeful— describe their character or inclinations. In one study, the researchers administered an even shorter version, comprising 6 items: underappreciated, envious, resentful, insecure, misunderstood, and ignored.  To validate these measures, the researchers then recruited three samples of participants and administered a range of scales.  Overall, these studies revealed that

• the Narcissistic Vulnerability scale was negatively associated with agreeableness and extraversion but positively associated with neuroticism, as measured by the mini-IPIP measure of personality (Donnellan et al., 2006),
• the Narcissistic Vulnerability scale was positively and strongly associated with other measures of vulnerable narcissism, such as the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale,
• the 11 adjectives correspond to one factor, in which the CFI = .95 and standardised root-mean-square residual is .034.

Narcissism at work

Some researchers have developed instruments that assess narcissism as well as other dark traits, including Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism, in particular settings.  For example, Thibault and Kelloway (2020) designed and validated a measure of these traits that is applicable to workplaces.  To gauge narcissism, the instrument comprised the following items:

• My position at work is prestigious.
• I am much more valuable than my coworkers.
• I demand respect at work.
• People always pay attention to me at work.
• Others admire me at work.
• I like being the centre of attention at work.

The instrument also included a measure of

• Machiavellianism, such as “At work, people are only motivated by personal gain”,
• psychopathy, such as “I don’t care if I accidently hurt someone at work.”, and
• sadism, such as “It’s funny to watch people make mistakes at work”.

Thibault and Kelloway (2020) conducted two studies to validate this instrument.  As these studies revealed

• a confirmatory factor analysis validated the four factors,
• all these traits were significantly associated with workplace deviance, such as bullying, incivility, and other counterproductive acts, even after controlling social desirability.

Narcissism seems to be positively associated with affective commitment towards the organisation.  Nevertheless, as the authors underscored, people who are narcissistic may inflate the degree to which they perceive their job as prestigious and significant, increasing the likelihood they may inflate this commitment but still leave if they do not receive the respect they believe they deserve.

The Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire for Children-Revised

Previously, research on the features, consequences, and causes of narcissism was primarily confined to adult participants.  In more recent decades, some research has been extended to children and adolescents.  Accordingly, researchers have developed measures of narcissism that are more applicable to children and adolescents.  Initially, these researchers adapted the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the most common measure of grandiose narcissism, to suit children and adolescents.  These adapted instruments comprised fewer questions and referred to circumstances that are more applicable to individuals under 18.  Examples of these measures include the

• Narcissistic Personality Inventory-Juvenile Offender (Calhoun et al. 2000),
• Narcissistic Personality Inventory-Children (Barry et al. 2003).

Because of some concerns around the length and factor structure of these instruments, Ang and Yusof (2006) developed the Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire for Children.  To complete this measure, the children indicate the degree to which 18 statements describe their beliefs and behaviours on a 5-point Likert scale.  This instrument comprises four facets:

• six items, such as “I am really a special person”, gauge superiority,
• six items, such as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place”, gauge exploitative-ness,
• three items, such as “I like it when others brag about the good things I have done”, measure self-absorption, and
• three items, such as “It does not matter if I am the leader or not” (reverse-scored), measure leadership.

Nevertheless, Ang and Raine (2008) raised several concerns about this measure.  First, alpha reliability of self-absorption and leadership are less than 0.7 and thus inadequate.  Second, leadership and, to a lesser extent, self-absorption were deemed to be adaptive in some circumstances and not applicable to the intent of this measure.  Consequently, Ang and Raine (2008) proposed the Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire for Children-Revised—an instrument that is identical to the Narcissistic Personality Questionnaire for Children, except the items that correspond to self-absorption and leadership were deleted.   The six items that measure superiority are

• I always know what I am doing.
• I am going to be a great person.
• I was born a good leader.
• I am really a special person.
• I think my body looks good.
• I think I am a great person.

The six items that measure exploitative-ness are

• If I ruled the world it would be a better place.
• I am good at getting people to do things my way.
• It is easy for me to control other people.  
• I would do almost anything if you dared me.
• I can make people believe anything I want them to.
• When I am supposed to be punished, I can usually talk my way out of it.

This revised variant is usually preferred to the original version.  Specifically, as Ang and Raine (2008) revealed

• the 12 items correspond to two factors that generate adequate alpha reliability—and this factor structure is invariant across age and gender,
• overall narcissism, derived after the two sub-scales are combined, was more strongly related to proactive aggression than reactive aggression.

The Childhood Narcissism Scale

Around the same year the Questionnaire for Children-Revised was released, Thomaes et al. (2008) published the Childhood Narcissism Scale.  This scale comprises only 10 items and one facet.  Specifically, participants specify, on a 4-point rating scale, ranging from not at all true to completely true, the degree to which 10 statements characterise their beliefs and behaviour.  Typical items include

• I think it’s important to stand out.
• Kids like me deserve something extra.
• Without me, our class would be much less fun.
• It often happens that other kids get the compliments that I actually deserve.
• I love showing all the things I can do.

As evidence of validity, scores on this measure of narcissism were positively associated with

• the degree to which self-esteem depends on the validation of other people, called self-esteem contingency, such as “When other kids like me, I feel happier about myself” (Rudolph et al., 2005),
• the extent to which the interpersonal goals of these individuals revolve around dominance, admiration, or agency, such as “…How important is it for you that the others respect and admire you?”, rather than collaboration and belonging, such as “…how important is it for you that real friendship develops between you?” (Ojanen et al., 2005),
• limited levels of empathy, as rated by peers in the classroom to items like “These kids feel bad if they see another kid without a friend to play with” (Strayer & Roberts, 2004), and
• an inclination to seek revenge, as rated by peers.

Researchers have developed, and continue to deploy, a range of instruments to measure narcissism.  These instruments, however, tend to measure subclinical levels of narcissism. That is, these measures have seldom been designed to differentiate clinical or pathological levels of narcissism—levels that may warrant some interventions—from subclinical levels.  That is, to diagnose clinical or pathological narcissism, clinicians need to convene diagnostic interviews or administer the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 or the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III.

To streamline this diagnosis, Pincus et al. (2009) developed the Pathological Narcissism Inventory.   To generate potential items, the authors garnered insights from a comprehensive analysis of the relevant literature and from therapists who had, over many years, worked with narcissistic patients.  These therapists presented case studies to convey the key features of pathological narcissism.  The final set of 50 items generated seven factors, encompassing both grandiose and vulnerable manifestations of narcissism:

• contingent self-esteem, such as “It’s hard for me to feel good about myself unless I know other people like me”,
• exploitativeness, such as “I can make anyone believe anything I want them to”,
• self-sacrificing self-enhancement, such as “I try to show what I good person I am through my sacrifices” or “I help others to prove I’m a good person”,
• hiding the self, such as “When others get a glimpse of my needs, I feel anxious and ashamed”,
• grandiose fantasy, such as “I often fantasise about being recognised for my accomplishments”,
• devaluing, such as “When others don’t meet my expectations, I feel ashamed about what I wanted” and
• entitlement rage, such as “I get mad when people don’t notice all I do for them”.

Subsequent research, also conducted by Pincus et al. (2009), revealed that pathological narcissism seems to encompass more several manifestations of narcissism that do other tools, such as the Narcissism Personality Inventory.  In addition, pathological narcissism also influenced the behaviour of patients who had received psychotherapy.  If participants reported grandiose narcissism, such as elevated levels of grandiose fantasy or exploitativeness, they were not as inclined to attend hospital programs.  In contrast, if participants reported vulnerable narcissism, such as hiding the self or self-sacrificing self-enhancement, they were more inclined to utilise hospital services, such as the telephone crisis line. 

A brief measure of pathological narcissism

Schoenleber et al. (2016) constructed and validated a brief variant of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, comprising 28 items.  All the items were extracted from the original version of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory.  The brief variant also comprises seven facets, each comprising four items. 

• Three of these facets are related to grandiose narcissism: exploitative, self-enhancement, and grandiose fantasy. 
• Four of these facets are related to vulnerable narcissism: contingent self-esteem, hiding the self, devaluing, and entitlement rage. 

To identify which items to retain from the original inventory and to validate this brief measure, the researchers collected data from almost 4000 participants, derived from four samples: adult college students, community members, psychology students, and clients of an outpatient psychotherapy clinic.  In addition to the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, these participant completed

• the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale to assess grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism respectively,
• a measure of authentic pride and hubristic pride (Tracy & Robins, 2007), in which the individuals specified the degree to which they experience various relevant emotions, such as accomplished or arrogant,
• a measure of the likelihood that individuals would experience guilt or shame in various scenarios (Tangney et al., 2000).

Item response theory, and specifically the partial-credit model (Muraki, 1992), as well as confirmatory factor analyses and Pearson correlations revealed that

• 4 items corresponding to each facet discriminated individuals who were low on narcissism from individuals who were high on narcissism most effectively—and these items were retained to generate the brief scale,
• internal consistency measures of the seven facets and the two main subscales—grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism—are high and comparable to the original measure,
• confirmatory factor analyses verified the two main subscales,
• hubristic pride was positively associated with most of the facets, except self -enhancement and hiding the self; authentic pride was negatively associated with all facets of vulnerable narcissism.

Finally, Schoenleber et al. (2015) also utilised item response theory to identify the six most useful items that assess grandiose narcissism and the six most useful items that assess vulnerable narcissism.  These 12 items, presented in two Supplementary Tables of their paper, are collectively called the Super Brief Pathological Narcissism Inventory (for evidence of validity, at least in Swedish, see Kapetanovic et al., 2024).

Insight

Researchers have raised several concerns about explicit measures of narcissism: measures in which the purpose or intent of the questions are apparent rather than concealed.  One concern is that individuals who exhibit personality disorders or maladaptive traits, such as narcissism, may not be cognisant of their inclinations or behaviours. Indeed, individuals who are diagnosed with personality disorders often demonstrate limited insight into their signs and symptoms (Westen, 1997). Consequently, these narcissistic individuals may not answer questions that are designed to assess narcissism accurately.

However, research on whether individuals who exhibit narcissism are aware of these traits has uncovered conflicting findings.  That is

• a few studies have revealed that many people are rated as narcissistic by other individuals in their life, such as colleagues, but do not rate themselves as narcissistic (Cooper et al., 2012; Maples-Keller & Miller, 2018),
• other studies have shown that narcissistic people are aware of their narcissistic traits (Carlson et al., 2011; Tracy & Robins, 2007)—and even recognise these traits may impair their relationships and life (Carlson et al., 2011).

To explore the level of insight in greater depth, Sleep et al. (2021) conducted a comprehensive study, comprising two samples.  The first sample of 328 adults, who were users of Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed a survey that included

• the Short Dark Triad-3 (Jones & Paulhus, 2014) to gauge their level of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism,
• the Narcissistic Personality Inventory-13 (Gentile et al., 2013) to gauge three facets of grandiose narcissism in particular,
• the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment-Super Short Form (Collison et al., 2016) to measure three facets of psychopathy, and
• the DSM-5 Clinicians’ Personality Trait Rating Form (APA, 2011).

The Clinicians’ Personality Trait Rating Form comprises a set of 25 traits that correspond to maladaptive variants of the five personality traits, called negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition, and psychoticism.  Participants first indicated the extent to which they exhibit or demonstrate each trait.  Next, participants indicated the degree to which each trait has generated problems in their work life, school life, or relationships.   

The second sample of 394 adults, recruited from shopping malls, markets, and other locations in the community, completed a survey as well as invited a friend or family member to complete a survey.  The procedure was designed so that 394 individuals evaluated themselves and were evaluated by someone else in their life.  This second sample of individuals completed similar instruments as did the first sample, besides some minor adjustments—such as the inclusion of an instrument that specifically assesses Machiavellianism.  Taken together, the study revealed that

• in general, friends and family tended to rate levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism similar to how individuals rated themselves, with correlations reaching about .36 for Narcissism,
• despite these high correlations, in general, friends and family appraised participants as more emotionally stable and not as entitled or exploitative as participants appraised themselves,
• individuals tended to believe these traits impaired their life at schools, work, or home—and evaluated these impairments as more pronounced than did their friends or family.