The conceptualization and assessment of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism: An investigation of common and unique features The Conceptualization and Assessment of Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism: An Investigation of Common and Unique Features

Researchers agree that there are two narcissism expressions, specifically grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. However, their assessment remains contentious. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Terry, 1988) assesses all aspects of grandiose narcissism for some whereas critics claim it assesses only ‘normal narcissism’. The alternative measure, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI; Pincus et al., 2009), is proposed to measure all aspects of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, including that which is clinically-significant, despite inconsistent evidence of the nature of its second-order factors and little empirical validation in clinical populations. The aim of the research reported in this thesis was to adapt the NPI and the PNI to provide more appropriate measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. This was investigated using four separate samples of university undergraduates. A total of 745 students completed a number of measures, including the NPI and PNI, along with selfesteem and Five-Factor personality measures. Additionally, one sample completed a lexical decision task designed to measure self-esteem indirectly (i.e., implicit selfesteem). As the focus of studies previously investigating how best to assess narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability has been on content that distinguishes each, there has been little exploration of which narcissism features are common to these expressions beyond the investigation of entitlement and exploitative tendencies. It is argued in this thesis that comprehensive assessment of the narcissism expressions involves the identification and measurement of both common and unique features of narcissism. The current research examined the items loading on the subscales of the NPI and PNI before using these adapted subscales to construct new measures of the narcissism