I thought it would be interesting for members here to see one way in which narcissism (subclinical) can be measured.
First developed by Raskin and Hall the original NPIs (narcissistic personality inventory) contained 80 and 54 items (statisticsolutions, 2022). The NPI - 40 consists of a set of itemised statements in the following format:
1. A. I have a natural talent for influencing people.
B. I am not good at influencing people.
There are a number of such statements and the task of the individual is to pick the option that most suits their way of thinking. The scoring system for some of these NPIs also enabled the practicing psychologist to score and assess various traits including:
Authority
Exploitiveness
Vanity and superiority
Reliability
While the NPI and its offshoots have been used extensively, there are a number of criticisms about its reliability. Wikipedia makes mention of researchers such as Ackerman who have commented that false positives may be generated due to the individual having healthy self-esteem scoring higher on the questionnaire than those with deficits.
You can access the NPI - 40 from:
(Scroll to "obtaining the NPI -40" section and click the link to get a doc file with the NPI - 40)
image credits: CDD20/pixabay
thank you Daniel, you are the best! Yes these assessments get confusing as Narcissism shows up differently for different people...There are two kinds: the vulnerable one and the grandiose one....Overall though, I think it's important to remember that narcissism is a developmental phenomenon. How or why it develops differs depending on the different experiences that happened during the different developmental phases from childhood into adulthood. These small nuances would surely make assessments complex.