Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigated grandiose narcissism from a categorical perspective. We tested whether subgroups of narcissists can be distinguished that differ in their expressions of more agentic (narcissistic admiration, ADM) and more antagonistic (narcissistic rivalry, RIV) pathways of narcissism. We analysed three German samples (total N = 2211; M_age = 26; 70% female) and one US sample (N = 971; M_age = 35; 74% female) using latent class analysis. Four subgroups of narcissists were consistently identified across samples from Germany and the United States: low narcissists, moderate narcissists primarily characterized by agentic aspects (ADM), moderate narcissists characterized by both agentic and antagonistic aspects (ADM + RIV), and high narcissists. The subgroups were systematically related to a number of personality traits (e.g. Machiavellianism, impulsivity) and adjustment indicators (e.g. self–esteem, empathy). Members in the moderate narcissists—ADM subgroup showed the most adaptive characteristics while members in the moderate narcissists—ADM + RIV subgroup showed the most maladaptive characteristics. Investigating grandiose narcissism—a primarily quantitative trait—from a categorical perspective can yield valuable insights that would otherwise be overlooked. In addition, our results underline the utility of a self–regulatory process approach to grandiose narcissism that distinguishes between agentic and antagonistic dynamics. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology

Keywords

narcissism NARQ admiration rivalry latent class analysis

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Asendorpf

J. B.

(2003). Head–to–head comparison of the predictive validity of personality types and dimensions. European Journal of Personality, 17, 327–346.

Asendorpf

J. B.

, Borkenau

, Ostendorf

, & Van Aken

M. A. G.

(2001). Carving personality description at its joints: Confirmation of three replicable personality prototypes for both children and adults. European Journal of Personality, 15, 169–198.

Asendorpf

J. B.

, & Denissen

J. J. A.

(2006). Predictive validity of personality types versus personality dimensions from early childhood to adulthood: Implications for the distinction between core and surface traits. Merrill–Palmer Quarterly–Journal of Developmental Psychology, 52, 486–513.

Back

M. D.

, Küfner

A. C.

, Dufner

, Gerlach

T. M.

, Rauthmann

J. F.

, & Denissen

J. J.

(2013). Narcissistic admiration and rivalry: Disentangling the bright and dark sides of narcissism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 1013–1037.

Bentler

P. M.

(1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238–246.

Blickle

, Schlegel

, Fassbender

, & Klein

(2006). Some personality correlates of business white–collar crime. Applied Psychology, 55, 220–233.

Brown

R. P.

(2003). Measuring individual differences in the tendency to forgive: Construct validity and links with depression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 759–771.

Browne

M. W.

, & Cudeck

(1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Bollen

K. A.

, & Long

J. S.

(Eds.), Testing structural equation models (pp. 136–162). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Bushman

B. J.

, & Baumeister

R. F.

(1998). Threatened egotism, narcissism, self–esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self–love or self–hate lead to violence? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 219–229.

10.

Cain

N. M.

, Pincus

A. L.

, & Ansell

E. B.

(2008). Narcissism at the crossroads: Phenotypic description of pathological narcissism across clinical theory, social/personality psychology, and psychiatric diagnosis. Clinical Psychology Review, 28, 638–656.

11.

Campbell

W. K.

(2001). Is narcissism really so bad? Psychological Inquiry, 12, 214–216.

12.

Campbell

W. K.

, & Campbell

S. M.

(2009). On the self–regulatory dynamics created by the peculiar benefits and costs of narcissism: A contextual reinforcement model and examination of leadership. Self and Identity, 8, 214–232.

13.

Campbell

W. K.

, Foster

C. A.

, & Finkel

E. J.

(2002). Does self–love lead to love for others? A story of narcissistic game playing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 340–354.

14.

Campbell

W. K.

, Goodie

A. S.

, & Foster

J. D.

(2004). Narcissism, confidence, and risk attitude. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 17, 297–311.

15.

Chatterjee

, & Hambrick

D. C.

(2007). It's all about me: Narcissistic chief executive officers and their effects on company strategy and performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 52, 351–386.

16.

Christie

, & Geis

F. L.

(1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press.

17.

Costa

P. T.

, Herbst

J. H.

, McCrae

R. R.

, Samuels

, & Ozer

D. J.

(2002). The replicability and utility of three personality types. European Journal of Personality, 16, S73–S87.

18.

Cramer

(2011). Narcissism through the ages: What happens when narcissists grow older? Journal of Research in Personality, 45, 479–492.

19.

Davis

M. H.

(1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113–126.

20.

Donnellan

M. B.

, & Robins

R. W.

(2010). Resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled personality types: Issues and controversies. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11, 1070–1083.

21.

Dubas

J. S.

, Gerris

J. R. M.

, Janssens

J. M. A. M.

, & Vermulst

A. A.

(2002). Personality types of adolescents: Concurrent correlates, antecedents, and type X parenting interactions. Journal of Adolescence, 25, 79–92.

22.

Fatfouta

, Gerlach

T. M.

, Schröder–Abé

, & Merkl

(2015). Narcissism and lack of interpersonal forgiveness: The mediating role of state anger, state rumination, and state empathy. Personality and Individual Differences, 75, 36–40.

23.

Fleiss

J. L.

(1971). Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 378–382.

24.

Geukes

, Nestler

, Hutteman

, Dufner

, Küfner

A. C. P.

, Egloff

…, & Back

M. D.

(in press). Puffed up but shaky selves: State self–esteem level and variability in narcissists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

25.

Goldberg

L. R.

, Johnson

J. A.

, Eber

H. W.

, Hogan

, Ashton

M. C.

, Cloninger

C. R.

, & Gough

H. G.

(2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public–domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96.

26.

Grijalva

, Harms

P. D.

, Newman

D. A.

, Gaddis

B. H.

, & Fraley

R. C.

(2015). Narcissism and leadership: A meta–analytic review of linear and nonlinear relationships. Personnel Psychology, 68, 1–47.

27.

L. T.

, & Bentler

P. M.

(1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1–55.

28.

Kempf

(2012). A pragmatic approach to Rasch–modeling: The loss of information index. Institutional Repository of the University of Konstanz. Retrieved from http://nbn–resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352–209584

29.

Lang

F. R.

, John

, Lüdtke

, Schupp

, & Wagner

G. G.

(2011). Short assessment of the Big Five: Robust across survey methods except telephone interviewing. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 548–567.

30.

Lange

, Crusius

N. J.

, & Hagemeyer

(2016). The Evil Queen's dilemma: Linking narcissistic admiration and rivalry to benign and malicious envy. European Journal of Personality, 30, 168–188.

31.

Lavner

J. A.

, Lamkin

, Miller

J. D.

, Campbell

W. K.

, & Karney

B. R.

(2015). Narcissism and newlywed marriage: Partner characteristics and marital trajectories. Personality Disorders. Advance online publication.

32.

Lazarsfeld

P. F.

(1950). The logical and mathematical foundations of latent structure analysis. In Stouffer

S. A.

, Guttman

, Suchman

E. A.

, Lazarsfeld

P. F.

, Star

S. A.

, & Clausen

J. A.

(Eds.), Measurement and prediciton (pp. 362–412). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

33.

Lazarsfeld

P. F.

, & Henry

N. W.

(1968). Latent structure analysis. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

34.

Leckelt

, Küfner

A. C. P.

, Nestler

, & Back

M. D.

(2015). Behavioral processes underlying the decline of narcissists‘ popularity over time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 856–871.

35.

F. M.

, Cohen

A. S.

, Kim

S. H.

, & Cho

S. J.

(2009). Model selection methods for mixture dichotomous IRT models. Applied Psychological Measurement, 33, 353–373.

36.

Linzer

D. A.

, & Lewis

J. B.

(2011). poLCA: An R package for polytomous variable latent class analysis. Journal of Statistical Software, 42, 1–29.

37.

Maccoby

(2007). Narcissistic leaders: Who succeeds and who fails. New York: Harvard Business School Press.

38.

McCullough

M. E.

, Emmons

R. A.

, & Tsang

J. A.

(2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 112–127.

39.

McCutcheon

A. L.

(1987). Latent class analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

40.

McDonald

R. P.

(1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

41.

Miller

J. D.

, Maples

J. L.

, Buffardi

, Cai

, Gentile

, Kisbu–Sakarya

, & Campbell

W. K.

(2015). Narcissism and United States‘ culture: The view from home and around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 1068–1089.

42.

Miller

J. D.

, Campbell

W. K.

, Young

D. L.

, Lakey

C. E.

, Reidy

D. E.

, Zeichner

, & Goodie

A. S.

(2009). Examining the relations among narcissism, impulsivity, and self–defeating behaviors. Journal of Personality, 77, 761–794.

43.

Morf

C. C.

, & Rhodewalt

(2001). Unraveling the paradoxes of narcissism: A dynamic self–regulatory processing model. Psychological Inquiry, 12, 177–196.

44.

Nylund

K. L.

, Asparouhov

, & Muthen

B. O.

(2007). Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling: A Monte Carlo simulation study. Structural Equation Modeling, 14, 535–569.

45.

Patton

J. H.

, Stanford

M. S.

, & Barratt

E. S.

(1995). Factor structure of the Barratt impulsiveness scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 768–774.

46.

Paulhus

D. L.

, Neumann

C. S.

, & Hare

R. D.

(in press). Manual for the Self–Report Psychopathy scale. Toronto, Canada: Multi–Health Systems.

47.

Paulhus

D. L.

, & Williams

K. M.

(2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556–563.

48.

Pelham

B. W.

, & Swann

W. B.

Jr. (1989). From self–conceptions to self–worth: On the sources and structure of global self–esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 672–680.

49.

Pincus

A. L.

, Ansell

E. B.

, Pimentel

C. A.

, Cain

N. M.

, Wright

A. G.

, & Levy

K. N.

(2009). Initial construction and validation of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory. Psychological Assessment, 21, 365–379.

50.

Core Team

(2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing Retrieved from http://www.R–project.org/.

51.

Raskin

R. N.

, & Hall

C. S.

(1979). Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Psychological Reports, 45, 590–590.

52.

Raskin

R. N.

, & Terry

(1988). A principal–components analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and further evidence of its construct validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 890–902.

53.

Rhodewalt

, & Morf

C. C.

(1995). Self and interpersonal correlates of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory—A review and new findings. Journal of Research in Personality, 29, 1–23.

54.

Robins

R. W.

, John

O. P.

, Caspi

, Moffitt

T. E.

, & Stouthamer–Loeber

(1996). Resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled boys: Three replicable personality types. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 157–171.

55.

Robins

R. W.

, Tracy

J. L.

, & Shaver

P. R.

(2001). Shamed into self–love: Dynamics, roots, and functions of narcissism. Psychological Inquiry, 12, 230–236.

56.

Rosenberg

(1965). Society and the adolescent self–image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universiy Press.

57.

Rosenberg

(1979). Conceiving the self. New York: Basic Books.

58.

Rosseel

(2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1–36.

59.

Rost

, Carstensen

C. H.

, & von Davier

(1999). Sind die Big Five Rasch–skalierbar? Eine Reanalyse der NEO–FFI–Nomierungsdaten [Are the Big Five Rasch–scalable? A re–analysis of the NEO–FFI standardization sample]. Diagnostica, 45, 119–127.

60.

Schwarz

(1978). Estimating the dimension of a model. The Annals of Statistics, 6, 461–464.

61.

Sedikides

, Rudich

E. A.

, Gregg

A. P.

, Kumashiro

, & Rusbult

(2004). Are normal narcissists psychologically healthy?: Self–esteem matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 400–416.

62.

Specht

, Luhmann

, & Geiser

(2014). On the consistency of personality types across adulthood: Latent profile analyses in two large–scale panel studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 540–556.

63.

Steiger

J. H.

(1990). Structural model evaluation and modification—An interval estimation approach. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 25, 173–180.

64.

Trzesniewski

K. H.

, Donnellan

M. B.

, & Robins

R. W.

(2008). Is “Generation Me” really more narcissistic than previous generations? Journal of Personality, 76, 903–918.

65.

Tucker

L. R.

, & Lewis

(1973). Reliability coefficient for maximum likelihood factor–analysis. Psychometrika, 38, 1–10.

66.

Wetzel

, Xu

X. L.

, & von Davier

(2015). An alternative way to model population ability distributions in large–scale educational surveys. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 75, 739–763.

67.

Wurst

S. N.

, Gerlach

T. M.

, Dufner

, Rauthmann

J. F.

, Grosz

M. P.

, Küfner

A. C. P.

, & Back

M. D.

(in press). Narcissism and romantic relationships: The differential impact of narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

3.29 MB

Distinguishing Subgroups of Narcissists with Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material