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In Defense of Narcissistic Personality Traits

Thomas A. WidigerUniversity of Kentucky

Miller and Campbell (pp. 180–191, 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 Association’s(APA) diagnostic manual, whereas the avoidantand obsessive– compulsive 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 understandif 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 couldn’t 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. 642–643). The NPI will provide a reasonably validassessment of narcissistic personality disorderbecause, like most other personality disordermeasures, the authors of the NPI constructed theinstrument 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: widiger@uky.edu

Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment © 2010 American Psychological Association2010, Vol. 1, No. 3, 192–194 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 usefulinformation 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 one’shead 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 isn’t that difficult to findclinically 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, theresults, 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 personalitytraits, 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. Manyof the APA personality disorders suffer from alack of empirical attention (Blashfield & Intoc-cia, 2000), but narcissistic personality disorderis not one of them.

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