Research on narcissistic personality relies almost exclusively on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Terry, 1988) as the primary or only measure of narcissism (Cain, Pincus, & Ansell, 2008). Although other measures of narcissism exist, most measure uniformly unhealthy forms of narcissism, such as pathological narcissism (Pincus et al., 2009). Few options outside of the NPI are available to researchers who study grandiose narcissism (GN) – a type of narcissism characterized by generally positive intrapersonal functioning (e.g., high self-esteem) and negative (especially long-term) interpersonal functioning (Campbell and Foster, 2007 and Foster and Twenge, 2011).
The NPI functions well as a global measure of GN – it is highly reliable and provides good content coverage of the construct (Miller, Price, & Campbell, 2012) – but significant problems arise when researchers attempt more nuanced facet-level examinations of GN. Numerous factor-analytic studies of the NPI have been published over the past 30 years. One of the earliest and most influential of these studies (Raskin & Terry, 1988) revealed seven factors underlying GN (i.e., authority, self-sufficiency, vanity, superiority, exhibitionism, entitlement, exploitativeness). Most of these factors reflect theoretically uncontroversial facets of GN (although, the inclusion of authority has been debated; Brown et al., 2009 and Miller and Campbell, 2011) and together they paint a portrait that is consistent with classic and contemporary theoretical descriptions of GN (Campbell and Foster, 2007, Freud, 1914, Horney, 1939, Millon and Davis, 1996, Morf and Rhodewalt, 2001 and Reich, 1972). It is also one of the most empirically defensible factor solutions in terms of model fit (Corry, Merritt, Mrug, & Pamp, 2008). Unfortunately, several of these factors’ corresponding subscales exhibit consistently low reliability (e.g., Corry et al., 2008, del Rosario and White, 2005 and Foster and Campbell, 2007).
Several attempts have been made to address issues of subscale reliability, but none have, in our opinions, been entirely successful. For example, Corry et al. (2008) proposed a two factor model (leadership/authority, exhibitionism/entitlement) that exhibits good subscale reliability, but lacks coverage of seemingly critical facets of GN, including superiority and exploitativeness. Other proposed models offer somewhat more expansive coverage of the construct, but continue to exhibit poor subscale reliability (e.g., Ackerman et al., 2011, three factor solution includes an entitlement/exploitativeness subscale with α ∼ .40). In short, none of the published factor models of the NPI offer both comprehensive coverage of the construct and reliable facet-level measurement.
One way to solve the problem of unreliable facet-level measurement is to develop measures that are purpose-built to reliably measure specific GN facets (Brown et al., 2009). Indeed, several of these measures now exist (e.g., the Psychological Entitlement Scale; Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004). For researchers interested exclusively in the facets of GN, this approach may be most appropriate. However, for researchers who are also interested in the global construct of GN, this approach may prove to be inefficient and even impractical. Thus, we think there is a need for an instrument that efficiently, comprehensively, and reliably measures GN at both the global and facet levels. Although the NPI meets this first objective (efficiency), it does not meet the second and third (at least, not concurrently). We are skeptical that resorting NPI items into new subscales will solve these problems and thus we decided instead to develop an entirely new measure of GN.
Our measure, the Grandiose Narcissism Scale (GNS), was designed to reliably and validly measure GN at both the global and facet-levels. At the facet-level, the GNS was designed to replicate Raskin and Terry’s (1988) seven NPI subscales, consisting of authority (preferring to be in charge), self-sufficiency (preferring to do things on one’s own rather than in groups), superiority (belief that one is better than others), vanity (strong focus on physical appearance), exhibitionism (acting in ways that grab others’ attention), entitlement (belief that one is deserving of special treatment), and exploitativeness (willingness to take advantage of others). As noted earlier, most of these subscales represent theoretically uncontroversial facets of GN. All of them (including authority) represent traits and proclivities that have long been components of the theoretical description of GN and its theoretical ancestors, such as phallic and elitist narcissism (Campbell and Foster, 2007, Freud, 1914, Horney, 1939, Millon and Davis, 1996, Morf and Rhodewalt, 2001 and Reich, 1972). Given these facts, we concluded that the seven subscales derived by Raskin and Terry (1988) were both theoretically justifiable and provided comprehensive coverage of the construct of GN (Miller et al., 2012).
2. Study 1: Scale construction and examination of psychometric properties
We wrote a pool of 35 items that tapped into the seven hypothesized factors (5 items per factor). We examined the psychometric properties of these items and submitted them to an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to test whether they loaded onto their respective factors. We also examined the reliability of the full-scale GNS and putative subscales and compared them to their NPI counterparts.
