دو چهره نارسیسوس؟مقایسه تجربی پرسشنامه شخصیت خودشیفتگی و پرسشنامه پاتولوژی خودشیفتگی

Areas of convergence and divergence between the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Terry, 1988) and the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI; Pincus et al., 2009) were evaluated in a sample of 586 college students. Summary scores for the NPI and PNI were not strongly correlated (r = .22) but correlations between certain subscales of these two inventories were larger (e.g., r = .71 for scales measuring Exploitativeness). Both measures had a similar level of correlation with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder scale from the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4 ( Hyler, 1994) (r = .40 and .35, respectively). The NPI and PNI diverged, however, with respect to their associations with Explicit Self-Esteem. Self-esteem was negatively associated with the PNI but positively associated with the NPI (r = −.34 versus r = .26). Collectively, the results highlight the need for precision when discussing the personality characteristics associated with narcissism.

The appropriate conceptualization and measurement of narcissism generates intense debate (e.g., Brown et al., 2009, Cain et al., 2008, Miller and Campbell, 2008, Pincus and Lukowitsky, 2010 and Rosenthal and Hooley, 2010). One contentious issue concerns the distinction between normal and pathological narcissism. Normal narcissism reflects seemingly healthy expressions of self-enhancement whereas pathological narcissism reflects clinically significant impairments stemming from a brittle sense of self (Pincus et al., 2009). Pincus and his colleagues suggest the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Terry, 1988), the most popular measure of the construct in social/personality psychology (Cain et al., 2008), assesses normal narcissism whereas their newly developed Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI; Pincus et al., 2009) assesses pathological narcissism. The objective of the present study is to provide additional data on these two approaches for measuring narcissistic attributes. In particular, we evaluate how these inventories are related to each other and how these inventories relate to criterion-related variables including symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and Explicit Self-Esteem.