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The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School The College of the Liberal Arts THE STRUCTURE OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY: ADAPTIVE AND MALADAPTIVE DIMENSIONS AS AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF NARCISSISM A Thesis in Psychology by Emily B. Ansell © 2005 Emily B. Ansell Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2005 ii The thesis of Emily B. Ansell was reviewed and approved* by the following: Aaron L. Pincus Associate Professor of Psychology Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee Craig S. Edelbrock Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Elizabeth C. Pinel Associate Professor of Psychology William J. Ray Professor of Psychology Kevin R. Murphy Professor of Psychology Head of the Department of Psychology *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Across domains of research on personality there is a growing consensus that both adaptive and maladaptive conceptualizations of narcissistic characteristics are necessary to adequately understand narcissism. Recent attempts at integrating these various viewpoints of narcissism have led to the proposal of a single dimension on which pathological and normal variants of narcissism co-exist. However, this construction of narcissism assumes adaptive and maladaptive typologies are categorical in that they represent only a portion of this proposed narcissism continuum. The current study proposes an alternative two dimensional model of narcissism consisting of adaptive and maladaptive narcissism dimensions. In order to determine the structure of the narcissism construct, 982 participants completed a variety of personality self-report measures related to narcissism, self-esteem, dependency, shame, empathy, and personality organization. Principal components analysis confirmed previous findings that identified grandiose and vulnerable components across narcissism measures. Items were submitted for multidimensional scaling analysis to clarify questions regarding the structure of the two components and the congruence of the proposed model with item content. Results suggest that the best balance between descriptive parsimony and complexity is a two dimensional structure of narcissism consisting of adaptive and maladaptive dimensions which are theoretically congruent and consistent across analyses. The adaptive expressions of narcissism dimension ranges from confident self-esteem to hypersensitivity and dependency. The maladaptive expressions of narcissism dimension ranges from empathic understanding to aggression, entitlement, and exploitation. iv Overall, these results assert that the structure of narcissism requires two key elements to adequately describe the construct: 1) a dimensional approach to the spectrum of healthy and pathological narcissism, and 2) adaptive and maladaptive expressions of narcissism as separate and orthogonal dimensions integrated into a parsimonious but structurally meaningful space. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................1 Narcissism: Diagnosis and Assessment................................................................4 Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism in Clinical Theory...................................5 Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism in Personality Assessment ......................8 Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism in Social Psychology of the Self.............16 Self-esteem ....................................................................................................17 Defensive versus secure self-esteem. .....................................................18 Grandiosity, Rage, and Self-esteem. ......................................................21 Self-enhancement ..........................................................................................22 Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism in Interpersonal Functioning...................26 Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism in Clinical Diagnoses..............................31 Structural Models of Narcissism ..........................................................................36 The Continuum Model of Narcissism ...........................................................38 A Two Dimensional Model of Narcissism....................................................43 Principal Component Analyses of Narcissism Measures .....................................47 Present Study ........................................................................................................51 Chapter 2 Method .......................................................................................................53 Participants. ...................................................................................................53 Measures........................................................................................................53 Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1981). ...........54 Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory (RSI; Rosenberg, 1965)...................54 Vulnerable Narcissism Scale (VNS, Pimental et al., 2004)...................56 Visions of Morality Scale (VMS, Shelton & McAdams, 1990) ............58 Murray’s Narcism Scale (MNS, Hendin & Cheek, 1997; Murray, 1938) ...............................................................................................58 Serkownek’s Narcissism Hypersensitivity Scale (SNHS, Serkownek, 1975) ...............................................................................................59 Experience of Shame Scale (ESS, Andrews, Qian, & Valentine, 2002). ..............................................................................................59 Chapter 3 Principal Components Analysis .................................................................61 Results...................................................................................................................61 Discussion.............................................................................................................65 Chapter 4 Multidimensional Scaling ..........................................................................67 MDS Analysis.......................................................................................................75 MDS Analysis of Narcissism Subscales........................................................76 vi Discussion of MDS Analysis of Narcissism Subscales.................................78 MDS Analysis of Narcissism Items. .............................................................84 Discussion of MDS Analysis of Narcissism Items........................................86 MDS Analysis of Narcissism, Self-Esteem, Dependency, Shame, Morality, and Personality Organization Scales......................................90 Discussion of MDS Analysis of Narcissism, Self-Esteem, Dependency, Shame, Morality, and Personality Organization Scales. ........................92 MDS Analysis of Narcissism Scale Items, Self-Esteem, Dependency, Shame, Morality, and Personality Organization Scales. ........................97 Discussion of MDS Analysis of Narcissism Scale Items, Self-Esteem, Dependency, Shame, Morality, and Personality Organization Scales. ..99 Chapter 5 General Discussion.....................................................................................106 References....................................................................................................................112 Appendix A Figures.....................................................................................................127 Appendix B Tables .....................................................................................................186 Appendix C Narcissism Scales With Items ................................................................218 VNS Items ............................................................................................................218 MNS Items............................................................................................................223 NPI Items..............................................................................................................224 SNHS Items ..........................................................................................................227 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The Watson et al. (2002) continuum model of narcissism…………….…….128 Figure 2. The two dimensional model of narcissism. …………………………….……129 Figure 3. Hypothetical locations of previously identified PCA factors within the two dimensional model……………………………………………………………………...130 Figure 4. Scree plot for PCA of sample 1………………………………………………131 Figure 5 Component plot of narcissism scales in rotated space for sample 1. ………...132 Figure 6. Scree plot for PCA of sample 2………………………………………………133 Figure 7 Component plot of narcissism scales in rotated space for sample 2………….134 Figure 8. Scree plot for PCA of combined sample………………………………..……135 Figure 9. Component plot of narcissism scales in rotated space for combined sample……………………………………………………………………………..……136 Figure 10. Scree plot for PCA of VNS and NPI subscales, MNS and SNHS scales for sample 1…………………………………………………………………..…………….137 Figure 11. Component plot in rotated space of VNS and NPI subscales, MNS and SNHS scales for sample 1………………………………………………………….…………..138 Figure 12. Scree plot for PCA of VNS and NPI subscales, MNS and SNHS scales for sample 2……………………………………………………………………………..….139 Figure 13. Component plot in rotated space of VNS and NPI subscales, MNS and SNHS scales for
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