Dimensionality of narcissism: a Bifactorial model of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory using single-stimulus response formats

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a widely used measure of narcissism; however, several different conflicting factor structures have been proposed. The present study aimed to untangle those differences by offering a bifactor model of narcissism with an underlying general narcissism factor and several specific factors. Our objective was to estimate the variance explained by the general and the specific factors. Therefore, we applied a set of confirmatory factor analyses on three independent studies (N = 791; N = 319 and N = 237), and also tested the construct validity of these factors with other contemporary measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, big five personality traits, explicit self-esteem, gender and well-being. Our results suggest that the bifactor model with three specific factors yielded acceptable fit to our data in all of the different single-stimulus response formats and languages used in our studies and modelling three specific factors offered more insight into the adaptive and maladaptive characteristics of narcissism. The general narcissism factor alone explains only about half of the common variance, highlighting the importance of the specific factors as well.
Author(s): Márton Engyel [sup.1] [sup.2] , Róbert Urbán [sup.2] , Szabolcs Bandi [sup.3] [sup.4] , László Nagy [sup.3] [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5591.8, 0000 0001 2294 6276, Doctoral School of [...]