In a sample of 596 undergraduates, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and its factors were correlated with self-esteem, assertiveness, and hypercompetitiveness. In zero-order data, assertiveness, narcissism, and hypercompetitiveness all displayed direct intercorrelations. Partial correlations controlling for self-esteem and for the NPI factors uncovered more specific linkages of assertiveness with self-esteem and healthier narcissism and of hypercompetitiveness with maladjusted narcissism. These outcomes conformed with recent suggestions that conscious representations of the self can be arranged along a continuum defined by healthy self-esteem at one extreme and by maladjusted narcissism at the other.
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