How to Profile a Narcissist With One

Simple Question
The one question a true narcissist cannot resist
Posted Jan 28, 2016

Have you ever wondered whether someone you know, perhaps a friend, a colleague, or
even a close family member, is a narcissist? How would you find out? You could try to
get the person of interest evaluated by a licensed clinical psychologist, for probably, a
steep fee. Alternatively, you might try to administer the most widely used measure of
narcissism in personality research yourself; the 40-item Narcissistic
Personality Inventory (NPI).
Yet, I have a distinct feeling that neither of these options seem plausible to most people.
At Indiana University, Sara Konrath and her colleagues recently sought to address
some of the challenges associated with administering such long questionnaires, and in
response, developed the so-called Single-Item Narcissism Scale (SINS).
At first, my colleague Seth Rosenthal (Yale) and I were skeptical about the idea that one
simple questionAre you a "narcissist"?could accurately identify narcissists given
that narcissism is such a complex and multidimensional personality trait (for a
discussion, see my previous post "Everything You've Always Wanted to Know about
Narcissism").
Given our initial skepticism paired with a dedication to replication science in socialpersonality research, we decided to see if we could replicate these initial positive
findings with a sample of over 2,000 American adults.
The results of our new study(link is external) were recently published in the
journal Personality and Individual Differences. In a nutshell, we were able to replicate
most of the authors' initial findings and we reached two main conclusions;

(1) The single-question measure does indeed correlate positively with the more complex
40-item NPI (link is external)questionnaire (i.e., they both seem to measure
narcissism).
(2) Importantly, while the NPI-based measure seems to conflate narcissism with normal,
or healthy self-esteem (due to questions that ask people about more normative traits
like "confidence" and "assertiveness"), the single-item measure did not correlate with
self-esteem at all! In other words, the measure does not appear to capture people who
might have some milder "lower-order" narcissistic traitswhich implies that the question
actually singles out the "hard-line" narcissists pretty well.
So, by now, I am sure you are anxious to know what the magic question actually is! It is
probably much simpler than you imagine.
If you want to find out whether someone is a narcissist, simply ask them:
Are you a "narcissist"?
This may seem counter-intuitive at first, and it certainly doesn't always work to ask
people directly about their personality traits, but the case of narcissism is unique. True
narcissists do not appear to view their narcissism as a bad thing. In fact, they are likely
to be proud of it! Indeed, a number of recent studies (link is external)have shown that
narcissists often admit that they behave in explicitly narcissistic ways, that they happily
describe themselves as arrogant, braggy, etc., and even strive to be more narcissistic!
Narcissists also appear aware that other people view them less positively than they
view themselves, yet simply don't care.
My co-author, Seth Rosenthal, suggests that there are several interesting factors about
the scale itself that may play an important role in its validity:
1) First, the scale asks respondents to identify with the trait as a noun I am a
narcissist, rather than the adjective I am narcissistic. That gives narcissists the
opportunity to stake their claim to a special identity that they know most people would

rejecti.e., providing an affirmative response to the question gives them the opportunity
to boost their ego.
2) Second, the one-item survey comes with a definition of narcissism: "Are you a
'narcissist'? The word narcissist means egotistical, self-focused, and vain." If a more
severe set of descriptive traits had been chosen (like entitled, exploitative, arrogant,
unempathetic), it might have been too difficult for people to endorse the item.
Of course, self-reports aren't perfect(link is external). People may say one thing, and the
truth may be another. In addition, a single-question like that doesn't tell us much about
the "type" of narcissism we're dealing with or whether particular narcissistic traits (e.g.,
grandiosity) are more pronounced than others (e.g., lack of empathy), which is
important because we know different aspects of narcissism can influence behavior in
different ways.
In conclusion, while a single-question(link is external) narcissism assessment might not
give us a detailed personality profile, it seems to measure the bottom line pretty well.
In other words, if you want to find out whether someone you know is a narcissist, it
might be worth simply asking them!
References
van der Linden, S., & Rosenthal, S.A. (2016). Measuring narcissism with a single
question? A replication and extension of the Single-Item Narcissism Scale
(SINS).Personality and Individual Differences, 90, 238-241.
Carlson, E.N. (2013). Honestly arrogant or simply misunderstood? Narcissists'
awareness of their narcissism. Self and Identity, 12(3), 259-277.
Carlson, E.N., Vazire, S., & Oltmanns, T. F. (2011). You probably think this paper's
about you: narcissists' perceptions of their personality and reputation. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 185-201.

Raskin, R., & Terry, H. (1988). A principal-components analysis of the Narcissistic

Personality Inventory and further evidence of its construct validity. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 54(5), 890-902.
Konrath, S., Meier, B.P., & Bushman, B.J. (2014). Development and validation of the
single item narcissism scale (SINS). PLoS ONE, 9(8): e103469.
Rosenthal, S.A., & Hooley, J.M. (2010). Narcissism assessment in socialpersonality
research: Does the association between narcissism and psychological health result
from a confound with self-esteem?. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(4), 453-465.
Copyright (2016). Sander van der Linden, Ph.D.
Image credit: "The Detective"(link is external) by paurian(link is external) is licensed
under CC BY 2.0