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COMMENTARIES
In Defense of Narcissistic Personality Traits
Thomas A. WidigerUniversity of Kentucky
Miller and Campbell (pp. 180191, this is-sue) provide an
informative discussion of theimportance of considering narcissistic
personal-ity trait research when attempting to
understandnarcissistic personality disorder. Their argu-ments might
seem so straightforward and com-
pelling that they are hardly worth presenting.However, it does
seem that this considerablebody of literature is at times
neglected, if notignored.
Although authors of some review papers andchapters on
narcissistic personality disorder dorepresent well the narcissistic
personality traitresearch (e.g., Pincus & Lukowitsky, in
press;Ronningstam, 2005), others have focused lesson this research
(e.g., Levy, Reynoso, Wasser-man, & Clarkin, 2007; Millon et
al., 1996; Mil-lon, Grossman, Millon, Meagher, & Ramnath,
2004). The lack of recognition of this literaturecan have dire
complications. Narcissistic per-sonality disorder has been proposed
for deletionfrom the American Psychiatric Associations(APA)
diagnostic manual, whereas the avoidantand obsessivecompulsive
personality disor-ders would be retained (Skodol, 2009; Skodol
&Bender, 2009). One must presume that this pro-posal is based
largely on the relative amount ofempirical support (Regier, Narrow,
Kuhl, &Kupfer, 2009), but this is difficult to understand
if the review of the literature concerning narcis-sistic
personality disorder included the many
empirical studies that have been conducted ontrait
narcissism.
What would be the reason for ignoring re-search on narcissism
when constructing a sys-tematic and comprehensive review of the
scien-tific research on narcissistic personality disor-
der? It couldnt be that the constructs are notcomparable.
Narcissistic personality traits aretypically assessed using the
Narcissistic Person-ality Inventory (NPI). As indicated by
Cain,Pincus, and Ansell (2008), since 1985, the NPIwas used as the
main or only measure of nar-cissistic traits in approximately 77%
of social/personality research on narcissism (pp. 642643). The NPI
will provide a reasonably validassessment of narcissistic
personality disorderbecause, like most other personality
disordermeasures, the authors of the NPI constructed the
instrument explicitly on the basis of the diag-nostic criterion
set for narcissistic personalitydisorder (Raskin & Hall, 1979,
1981). The NPIeven has scales to assess such narcissistic
per-sonality disorder symptoms as exploitativeness,entitlement,
superiority, exhibitionism, and van-ity. Not surprisingly, the NPI
correlates ashighly (if not higher) with measures of narcis-sistic
personality disorder as any two measuresof narcissistic personality
disorder correlatewith one another (e.g., Miller et al., 2009;
Sam-
uel & Widiger, 2008). Cain et al. are critical ofthe
construct of narcissism as assessed by theNPI but they are equally
critical of the APAcriterion set for precisely the same reasons.
Insum, it is apparent that the NPI is providing anassessment of
narcissism that is very close tonarcissistic personality disorder
as definedwithin the current APA diagnostic manual. Acomputer
search via PsychInfo for peer-reviewed articles that have used the
NPIyields at least 165 publications, the vast ma-
jority of which are empirical. This is a con-siderable body of
research that would helpbuttress the scientific foundation for
narcis-sistic personality disorder.
To see further discussion of the Target Conceptual
Article,Commentaries, and Author Response, as well as to
contrib-ute to the ongoing dialogue on this topic, please visit
ourOnline Forum at http://pdtrtonline.apa.org.
Thomas A. Widiger, Department of Psychology, Univer-sity of
Kentucky.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to
Thomas A. Widiger, Department of Psychology,University of Kentucky,
115 Kastle Hall, Lexington, KY40506-0044. E-mail:
[email protected]
Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment 2010
American Psychological Association2010, Vol. 1, No. 3, 192194
1949-2715/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020199
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Another potential reason for ignoring the re-search on
narcissism is the assumption thatstudies conducted within college
student and/orcommunity populations do not provide useful
information concerning a personality disorder.Editors will at
times reject manuscripts primar-ily because there was insufficient
evidence thatthe participants in the study had the disorderthat was
purportedly the focus of investigation.It would indeed seem rather
odd to attempt tounderstand the etiology, pathology, or associ-ated
features of schizophrenia within a sampleof normal college
students, none of whom metdiagnostic criteria. Should not the same
princi-ple apply to the study of narcissistic
personalitydisorder?
There is little support for the notion thatnarcissistic
personality disorder is qualitativelydistinct from normal
psychological functioning(Pincus & Lukowitzky, in press).
However,even if a construct is best understood dimen-sionally, that
does not mean it will necessarilybe usefully or optimally studied
within a typicalcollege student sample. Although intelligence
isclearly a dimensional construct and comparablecorrelates of
intelligence can exist along muchof the continuum (e.g., level of
skills in math-
ematics), understanding the dysfunction or cog-nitive pathology
of mild mental retardation(which typically does not appear to be
qualita-tively distinct in etiology or pathology fromnormatively
low levels of intelligence) wouldnot be usefully studied within a
college studentsample. Height is a continuum, yet the corre-lates
of being very tall (e.g., bumping oneshead against doorway or
ceiling beams) will notnecessarily be evident within a sample of
per-sons within normative levels of height.
However, unlike some mental disorders, clin-ically significant
and meaningful narcissisticpathology is likely to be seen within
collegestudent samples (Twenge, Konrath, Foster,Campbell, &
Bushman, 2008). Frankly, manypersons reading this sentence have
probablyknown someone within academia and/or theprofessions of
clinical psychology or psychiatrywhom they would consider to be
significantlynarcissistic. All of these narcissistic personswere at
one time undergraduate college stu-dents. It probably isnt that
difficult to find
clinically significant narcissism within a collegestudent
sample. As suggested by Ronningstam(2005), who played a key role in
the develop-
ment of the APA criterion set for narcissisticpersonality
disorder (Gunderson, Ronningstam,& Smith, 1991), Despite that
research with theNPI was conducted on nonclinical samples, the
results, especially in regard to self-esteem andaffect
regulation, have proved increasingly rel-evant and applicable to
pathological narcis-sism (p. 289). As she noted in particular,
thisresearch has contributed to the development ofthe compelling
self-regulatory processingmodel for narcissistic functioning
developed byMorf and Rhodewalt (2001).
In sum, much has been and will continue tobe learned about
narcissistic personality disor-der through studies of narcissistic
personality
traits, even within college student samples.Nevertheless, a
cautionary note is perhaps war-ranted with respect to college
student samples.It is useful, if not important, for studies
onnarcissism (and other maladaptive personalitytraits) to document
that the sample contains asufficient representation of a clinically
mean-ingful range of the relevant pathology, or atleast provide a
compelling argument for whythe results would likely generalize to a
sampleof persons with clinically significant levels ofthe
respective disorder. For instance, firstscreening a college student
sample to get thepersons at the very highest levels of
narcissismwould be useful, as well as documenting thepresence of
clinically significant levels of nar-cissism within the student
sample.
In conclusion, there does not appear to be acompelling reason
for neglecting to consider theconsiderable body of empirical
literature on nar-cissistic personality traits when attempting
tounderstand the etiology, pathology, or corre-lates of
narcissistic personality disorder. Many
of the APA personality disorders suffer from alack of empirical
attention (Blashfield & Intoc-cia, 2000), but narcissistic
personality disorderis not one of them.
References
Blashfield, R. K., & Intoccia, V. (2000). Growth ofthe
literature on the topic of personality disorders.American Journal
of Psychiatry, 157, 472447.
Cain, N. M., Pincus, A. L., & Ansell, E. B. (2008).
Narcissism at the crossroads: Phenotypic descrip-tion of
pathological narcissism across clinical the-ory, social/personality
psychology, and psychiatric
193COMMENTARIES
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