The Relationship Between Narcissism and Personality Traits of the Five-Factor-Model in Adolescents and Young Adults
A Comparative Study
Abstract
Abstract.Narcissism is seen as a multidimensional construct that consists of two manifestations: grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. In order to define these two manifestations, their relationship to personality factors has increasingly become of interest. However, so far no studies have considered the relationship between different phenotypes of narcissism and personality factors in adolescents. Method: In a cross-sectional study, we examine a group of adolescents (n = 98; average age 16.77 years; 23.5 % female) with regard to the relationship between Big Five personality factors and pathological narcissism using self-report instruments. This group is compared to a group of young adults (n = 38; average age 19.69 years; 25.6 % female). Results: Grandiose narcissism is primarily related to low Agreeableness and Extraversion, vulnerable narcissism to Neuroticism. We do not find differences between adolescents and young adults concerning the relationship between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and personality traits. Discussion: Vulnerable and grandiose narcissism can be well differentiated in adolescents, and the pattern does not show substantial differences compared to young adults.
Introduction
Narcissism in adolescents is associated with aggressive behavior and interpersonal difficulties stemming from a lack of empathy as well as arrogant and exploitative behavior (Thomaes, Brummelman, Reijntjes, & Bushman, 2013). However, narcissism is not a uniform construct, but rather consists of two related yet distinguishable manifestations (Cain, Pincus, & Ansell, 2008). The grandiose phenotype is characterized by arrogant and exploitative behavior and a marked entitlement attitude, whereas the vulnerable phenotype is characterized by hidden grandiose fantasies, high vulnerability in light of rejection and criticism, social retreat, and symptoms of depression (Levy, 2012). While recently there have been studies on the development of narcissism in adolescents, the distinction between vulnerable and grandiose narcissism has been given only minimal attention. For instance, Carlson and Gjerde (2009) identified behaviors in pre-school-aged children which later predicted narcissism, yet they failed to differentiate between the two expressions of narcissism. Similarly, Bukowski, Schwartzman, Santo, Bagwell, and Adams (2009) could not differentiate between vulnerable and grandiose narcissism, but showed that narcissistic symptoms are already stable in preadolescence. Other research groups distinguished between adaptive (healthy) and maladaptive (pathological) narcissism in children and adults and were able to show that these two dimensions differ with regard to the relationship to behavior problems (Barry, Frick, Adler, & Grafeman, 2007; Barry & Malkin, 2010). Yet others analyzed mainly grandiose narcissism and its relationship to aggressive behavior (Thomaes, Bushman, Stegge, & Olthof, 2008; Thomaes, Stegge, Olthof, Bushman, & Nezlek, 2011). An exception is the study by Fossati and colleagues (Fossati, Borroni, Eisenberg, & Maffei, 2010), who researched the relationship between vulnerable and grandiose narcissism and aggressive behavior in adolescents and showed that vulnerable narcissism is associated with reactive aggression but not with proactive aggression, while grandiose narcissism is associated both with reactive and proactive aggression.
When operationalizing these two manifestations of narcissism, researchers have increasingly studied their relationship to personality factors. A widely used personality model is the Five Factor Model, which describes personality based on five overarching domains (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The factor Neuroticism includes such facets as emotional instability, impulsiveness, and vulnerability to stress; the factor Extraversion captures activity, gregariousness, and positive emotion; the factor Conscientiousness encompasses traits such as self-control and achievement striving; the factor Agreeableness describes altruism and readiness to cooperate, with its opposite pole being antagonism, which involves hostility and manipulative and competitive behavior. Finally, the factor Openness to experience includes unconventionality, curiosity, and fantasy. To date, no studies have looked at the relationship between different forms of pathological narcissism and personality factors in adolescents. The current study examines this relationship for the first time in a sample of adolescents and compares it to a sample of young adults.
Studies of adults on the relationship between pathological narcissism and personality factors predominantly discovered a relationship between both vulnerable and grandiose manifestations of narcissism with low Agreeableness. In a sample of female college students, Hendin and Cheek (1997) showed a relationship between vulnerable forms of narcissistic disorders, as measured via the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS), and low Extraversion, low Agreeableness, low Openness, and high Neuroticism. In a study of psychology students, Narcissism measured via the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), which essentially measures grandiose narcissism, showed a positive relationship with Extraversion and Openness, and a negative one with Agreeableness (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Rhodewalt und Morf (1995) also found a negative relationship of the NPI to Neuroticism.
The research group around Keith Campbell and Joshua Miller studied the relationship between personality factors and vulnerable and grandiose narcissism in students based on various self-evaluation instruments. Two studies measured vulnerable narcissism as a joint construct of the scales of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) and the HSNS; one study measured grandiose narcissism as a joint construct of the scales of the PNI and NPI (Miller et al., 2011) and the second study exclusively of the NPI (Miller et al, 2010). Personality factors were captured with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Both studies showed a relationship between vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism (r = .6 and .65, respectively) and Agreeableness (r = –.31 and –.24, respectively); one of the two studies additionally showed a relationship with Extraversion (r = –.31) and Conscientiousness (r = –.21). In both studies, grandiose narcissism correlated negatively with Agreeableness (r = –.49 and –.57, respectively) and positively with Extraversion (r = .33 and .46, respectively). The study that captured grandiose narcissism exclusively with the NPI additionally showed a negative correlation to Neuroticism (r = –.3). An additional, recent study with different clinical and nonclinical samples employing different measures to assess personality traits and narcissism concluded that vulnerable narcissism is explained largely by Neuroticism (65 % of the variance) and to a lesser degree by low Agreeableness (19 % of the variance) (Miller et al., 2017).
A further study of students measuring grandiose and vulnerable narcissism with the PNI and the relationship with the factors of the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) showed that the factors of the PID-5 explained 35 % of the variance of grandiose narcissism and 54 % of the variance of vulnerable narcissism. In the regression analyses, antagonism (β = .44) was the only strong predictor of grandiose narcissism and negative affectivity the only strong predictor of vulnerable narcissism (β = .52) (Wright et al., 2013). Furthermore, Thomas, Wright, Lukowitsky, Donnellan, and Hopwood (2012), using the PNI, found no relationship between either vulnerable or grandiose narcissism and Agreeableness. However, different from the other studies, they measured personality traits with the Big Five Inventory (BFI).
Morf and colleagues (Morf et al., 2017) used the German version (Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993) of the NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) by Costa and McCrae (1992) to assess personality traits in a sample of mostly university students. They found a relationship between the PNI grandiose and vulnerable narcissism scale according to Wright and colleagues (Wright, Lukowitsky, Pincus, & Conroy, 2010) and Agreeableness (grandiose narcissism r = –.26, vulnerable narcissism r = –.44) and Neuroticism (grandiose narcissism r = .19, vulnerable narcissism r = .65); the latter was much lower for grandiose narcissism. Furthermore, vulnerable narcissism was negative correlated with Conscientiousness (r = –.20) and Extraversion (r = –.32).
In summary, low Agreeableness seems to play a role in both forms of pathological narcissism, even though not all studies confirm this. Moreover, vulnerable narcissism seems to be associated mainly with Neuroticism, grandiose narcissism with Extraversion. However, the available studies are difficult to compare because of the different instruments used in capturing narcissism and personality factors, and studies of adolescents are so far nonexistent.
Method
98 adolescents (average age 16.77 years; SD 1.16 years; 15–18 years; 23.5 % female) and 38 young adults (average age 19.69 years; SD 0.73 years; 19–21 years; 25.6 % female) were included in the study. Participants for the sample were recruited in the context of a study on the relationship between empathy, aggression, and narcissism from youth welfare service organizations (adolescents 37 %, young adults 39 %), career-training institutions (adolescents 40 %, young adults 56 %), child and adolescent outpatient units of psychiatric institutions (adolescents 22 %, no young adults), and youth parole services (adolescents 1 %, young adults 5 %) in Germany. Because of the specificity of the question to be studied, all participants were required to have a history of aggressive and delinquent behavior or above-average rating on the scales of aggressive or dissocial behavior according to the German version of the Youth Self-Report (YSR) or the Young Adult Self-Report (YASR) (Arbeitsgruppe Deutsche Child Behavior Checklist, 1998). A structured clinical interview ruled out participants with severe psychiatric disorders. Participants and their legal caregivers gave informed consent to take part in the study. The study was approved by the local Institutional Review Board.
Pathological narcissism was assessed with the German version (Morf et al., 2017) of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) (Pincus et al., 2009). The PNI consists of 7 subscales. The scale Exploitativeness measures a manipulative interpersonal orientation, the Grandiose Fantasy scale the engagement with compensatory fantasies of greatness, and Self-Sacrificing/Self-Enhancement scale the use of purportedly altruistic behaviors in order to maintain an inflated self-image. The scale Contingent Self-Esteem describes fluctuating levels of self-worth that depend on external factors; the Hiding the Self scale shows the reluctance to reveal needs and weaknesses to others; the Devaluing scale a disinterest in others who do not serve the stabilization of self-worth, and finally, the Entitlement Rage scale describes rage when expectations remain unfulfilled. Besides an overall score for pathological narcissism, the first three subscales allow for scoring grandiose narcissism, and the other four subscales for vulnerable narcissism (Wright et al., 2010). According to Wright and colleagues (2010), the scales Grandiose Narcissism (Cronbach’s α = .84) and Vulnerable Narcissism (Cronbach’s α = .93) showed good internal consistency. The German version of the PNI showed a good internal consistency with α coefficients for the subscales between .82 and .92 and an α coefficient of .94 for the PNI total scale (Morf et al., 2017). However, the factor assignment especially for the Entitlement Rage scale is still unclear (Morf et al., 2017).
Personality factors were captured with the German version (Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993) of the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) by Costa and McCrae (1992). The NEO-FFI comprises 60 questions and captures the five overarching personality factors Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. In a population-based sample with adults (age range 18–96 years), the internal consistency of the scales of the German version of the NEO-FFI was .67 (Openness to experience), .73 (Extraversion), .75 (Agreeableness), .82 (Neuroticism), and .82 (Conscientiousness) (Körner, Drapeau, Albani, Geyer, Schmutzer, & Brähler, 2008). In a sample of adolescents (N = 1,236, age range 14–16 years), the scales of the German version of the NEO-FFI showed good to satisfactory internal consistencies (α = .79–.82) with an exception for the scale Agreeableness (α = .67) (Roth, 2002).
In order to capture socially desirable tendencies in answers, the study also included the Social Desirability Scale 17 (Soziale-Erwünschtheits-Skala, SES-17). Internal consistency of the scale is described as good (α=.72–.75) (Stöber, 1999).
Internal consistency of the scales PNI, NEO-FFI, and the SES-17 for our sample were computed and are reported in the following section.
Results
Both the overall scale of the PNI (Cronbach’s α = .94) and the scales vulnerable narcissism (Cronbach’s α = .92) and grandiose narcissism (Cronbach’s α = .86) showed high internal consistency. The scales of the NEO-FFI (Cronbach’s α Neuroticism = .74, Extraversion = .69, Openness to experience = .56, Agreeableness = .60, Conscientiousness = .80) and the SES-17 (Cronbach’s α = .70) showed acceptable to good internal consistency with the exception of the scales Openness to experience and Agreeableness.
Adolescents and young adults did not show differences concerning the domains of the NEO-FFI, social desirability, or the extent of aggressive or delinquent behavior in the YSR/YASR (t-test for independent samples). Grandiose narcissism was higher in adolescents (mean 2.72, SD 0.68) than in young adults (mean 2.46, SD 0.62) (t(134) = 2.018, p < .05, Cohen’s d = 0.386); for vulnerable narcissism, there were no significant differences between adolescents (mean 2.45, SD 0.72) and young adults (mean 2.28, SD 0.65) (t(134) 1.246, ns; Cohen’s d = 0.238) (see Table 1). The scales for vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism correlated significantly both in adolescents (r= .567, p< .01) and in young adults (r= .682, p < .01).
In order to analyze the relationship between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism with personality factors and social desirability, we computed correlations according to Pearson. Only correlations with at least medium effect size (r ≥ .3) were considered meaningful; therefore, lower correlations are not further discussed. For the adolescent participants, we found significant correlations between grandiose narcissism (PNI Grand 15–18) and Extraversion, Openness to experience, and low Agreeableness, though none of them reached medium effect size. For vulnerable narcissism (PNI Vul 15–18), we found a significant and meaningful relationship with Neuroticism and a small but significant relationship with Conscientiousness. For the group of young adults, in comparison, grandiose narcissism (PNI Grand 19–21) showed a significant and meaningful correlation with low Agreeableness; for vulnerable narcissism (PNI Vul 19–21) there was a meaningful and significant relationship with low Agreeableness and Neuroticism (see Table 2). The significant correlation coefficients with an at least medium effect size did not differ significantly between the age groups for grandiose and vulnerable narcissism (Fisher’s Z ranging from .11 to .15, all ps > .10).
In order to analyze the extent to which grandiose and vulnerable narcissism can be predicted by personality factors while controlling for socially desirable answer tendencies, we performed stepwise regression analyses with vulnerable and grandiose narcissism as dependent variables, and social desirability, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness as independent variables. Finding no significant differences between the groups of adolescents and young adults with regard to personality traits, we combined the two samples. Table 3 shows that grandiose narcissism was determined mostly by Agreeableness and Extraversion and to a lesser degree by Openness to experience (F[3,132] = 10.653; p < .001; R2 .195). Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and social desirability showed no significant relationship. Vulnerable narcissism was primarily determined by Neuroticism and to a smaller degree by Agreeableness (F[2,133] = 25.884; p < .001; R2 .280). Extraversion, Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, and social desirability showed no significant relationship. However, the explained variance in vulnerable narcissism (28 %) and especially in grandiose narcissism (19.5 %) is rather small.
Discussion
Narcissism is viewed as a multidimensional construct for which the distinction between grandiose and vulnerable manifestations of narcissism is significant (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010). Previous work with adults and student samples revealed that the two manifestations of narcissism show different relationships to personality traits. In our study we compared these relationships between a group of adolescents and young adults of our sample.
Our study confirms that grandiose and vulnerable narcissism can be differentiated in adolescents in accordance with their correlation with personality factors. That is, vulnerable narcissism in adolescents was associated primarily with Neuroticism, while we found only small significant correlations between grandiose narcissism and Extraversion, low Agreeableness, and Openness to experience. In our sample of very young adults, in contrast, we found a relationship between grandiose narcissism and low Agreeableness and a relationship between vulnerable narcissism and low Agreeableness and especially Neuroticism. However, we did not find relevant differences between adolescents and young adults concerning the relationship between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and personality traits. Moreover, we found only small to medium differences between the two samples with regard to the extent of grandiose narcissism. It has been repeatedly stated that narcissistic symptoms increase during adolescence and go hand in hand with the separation process from the parents, the increased importance of peer relationships, and a changing self-image (Bleiberg, 1994). However, our sample shows on average slightly higher values for grandiose narcissism in adolescents than in young adults but not for vulnerable narcissism.
In the further analysis, we therefore combined the two samples and could confirm that grandiose and vulnerable narcissism can be differentiated in terms of their correlation with personality traits. Grandiose narcissism was associated mainly with Extraversion and low Agreeableness. These results are in line with previous studies showing a relationship between grandiose narcissism and Extraversion and low Agreeableness (Miller et al., 2010; Miller et al., 2011; Morf et al., 2017).
Vulnerable narcissism in our study was associated primarily with Neuroticism and to a lesser extent with low Agreeableness. The results are in line with previous studies that showed no or only small association between Agreeableness and vulnerable narcissism (Wright et al., 2013; Miller et al., 2017; Morf et al., 2017). The strong association between vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism is hardly surprising with respect to the high overlap of the two constructs. Miller and colleagues (2017) therefore describe vulnerable narcissism as a trait represented mainly by negative emotionality associated with difficult interpersonal interaction. Though Neuroticism seems to be the core of vulnerable narcissism, aspects like antagonistic behavior are important for the conceptualization of this construct as well. However, compared to the study by Miller and colleagues (2017) and the study of Wright and colleagues (2013), only 28 % of the variance of vulnerable narcissism is explained by Neuroticism and low Agreeableness. It is possible that, in our young sample, symptoms that appear to express vulnerable narcissism are in the final analysis more an expression of unspecific social anxiety and less an expression of a “disorder of Neuroticism” (Miller et al., 2017). Symptoms like avoidance of social situations, being easily offended, and impulsive behavior occur frequently in the course of adolescence (Herpertz-Dahlmann, Bühre, & Remschmidt, 2013).
Our study confirmed previous results in a sample of adolescents and young adults, though there are several limitations. Besides the cross-sectional design of our study, it is based solely on self-report instruments. In studies of pathological narcissism, which rely on self-evaluation instruments, narcissistic symptoms are often underestimated (Cooper, Balsis, & Oltmanns, 2012). Moreover, the study sample is very selective with increased occurrences of aggressive and delinquent behavior, and only 25 % of the participants were female, which makes it somewhat difficult to generalize the results. The main limitation, however, is the weak internal consistency of the Agreeableness scale of the NEO-FFI, which has been described before in a sample of adolescents (Roth, 2002). Nonetheless, we decided to use the NEO-FFI in our study because of our slightly older sample in order to be able to compare it to previous studies working with the Big Five Model. However, the PNI showed a good internal consistency in our sample. Despite these limitations, we confirmed previous results with regard to the relationship between different manifestations of narcissism and personality traits in a sample of adolescents and young adults, and showed that there were only small differences between these groups.
Conflicts of interests:
There are no conflicts of interest existing.
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