An Integrative Approach to the Assessment of Narcissism

Abstract

Narcissism research is poorly calibrated across fields of study in part due to confusion over how to integrate normal and pathological descriptions of narcissism. We argue that pathological and normal narcissism can be integrated in a single model that organizes around self-regulation mechanisms. We present theoretical and empirical support for this interpretation, and demonstrate that modeling pathological and normal narcissism as 2 dimensions underlying the narcissistic character can help to resolve some of the inconsistencies in the field regarding how to best assess adaptive and maladaptive expressions of narcissism.

Notes

The PNI grandiosity and vulnerability facets were not examined separately in this study, because our suggested integration of normal (social-personality) and pathological (clinical) conceptualizations of narcissism is distinctly rooted in the overall scores for each measure. The regression approach was employed to integrate results across multiple samples. PNI Grandiosity and PNI Vulnerability cannot be concurrently employed with the overall score in our analyses because each has a confounded part–whole relationship with the PNI total score.