Grandiose and entitled, but still fragile: A network analysis of pathological narcissistic traits

Abstract There is ongoing debate about the structure of pathological narcissism. Adopting a network approach, we investigate the core features of pathological narcissism and the nature of traits interconnections in a community sample (N = 944), considering also the effect of personality structure. Results suggest that grandiose fantasies, contingent self-esteem, and entitlement rage have a central role in defining pathological narcissism. Also, differences in interconnections between traits are found when considering individuals with different levels of personality structure. Our findings shed light on the structure and nature of pathological narcissism by showing the existence of both core and peripheral features, as well as their differential role in defining narcissistic manifestations at different levels of personality functioning.

[1]  E. Preti,et al.  The Role of Identity Instability in the Relationship Between Narcissism and Emotional Empathy , 2017 .

[2]  Eiko I. Fried,et al.  Replicability and Generalizability of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Networks: A Cross-Cultural Multisite Study of PTSD Symptoms in Four Trauma Patient Samples , 2018, Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[3]  Eiko I. Fried,et al.  Estimating psychological networks and their accuracy: A tutorial paper , 2016, Behavior research methods.

[4]  R. Tibshirani,et al.  Sparse inverse covariance estimation with the graphical lasso. , 2008, Biostatistics.

[5]  M. Gallucci,et al.  Narcissistic Traits and Explicit Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Implicit Self-View , 2016, Front. Psychol..

[6]  Z. Križan,et al.  The Narcissism Spectrum Model: A Synthetic View of Narcissistic Personality , 2018, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[7]  Lourens J. Waldorp,et al.  How well do network models predict observations? On the importance of predictability in network models , 2016, Behavior Research Methods.

[8]  O. Kernberg,et al.  The Almost Untreatable Narcissistic Patient , 2007, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

[9]  R. Krueger,et al.  Conceptions of Narcissism and the DSM-5 Pathological Personality Traits , 2013, Assessment.

[10]  O. Kernberg,et al.  A Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality Disorders. , 1996 .

[11]  M. Lenzenweger,et al.  The Inventory of Personality Organization: psychometric properties, factorial composition, and criterion relations with affect, aggressive dyscontrol, psychosis proneness, and self-domains in a nonclinical sample. , 2001, Psychological assessment.

[12]  Courtland S. Hyatt,et al.  Controversies in Narcissism. , 2017, Annual review of clinical psychology.

[13]  M. Kernis.  TARGET ARTICLE: Toward a Conceptualization of Optimal Self-Esteem , 2003 .

[14]  P. Kernberg,et al.  Personality Disorders In Children And Adolescents , 2000 .

[15]  F. Madeddu,et al.  Investigating the relationship between narcissism and emotion regulation difficulties: the role of grandiose and vulnerable traits , 2017 .

[16]  Jonas M. B. Haslbeck,et al.  How predictable are symptoms in psychopathological networks? A reanalysis of 18 published datasets , 2017, Psychological Medicine.

[17]  A. Wright.  On the Measure and Mismeasure of Narcissism , 2016, Assessment.

[18]  D. Borsboom.  A network theory of mental disorders , 2017, World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association.

[19]  G. Costantini,et al.  The centrality of affective instability and identity in Borderline Personality Disorder: Evidence from network analysis , 2017, PloS one.

[20]  S. Horvath,et al.  Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology , 2011 .

[21]  A. Skodol,et al.  Longitudinal validation of general and specific structural features of personality pathology. , 2016, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[22]  D. Borsboom,et al.  State of the aRt personality research: A tutorial on network analysis of personality data in R , 2015 .

[23]  G. Costantini,et al.  Stability and variability of personality networks. A tutorial on recent developments in network psychometrics , 2017, Personality and Individual Differences.

[24]  A. Pincus,et al.  Narcissistic grandiosity and narcissistic vulnerability in psychotherapy. , 2014, Personality disorders.

[25]  Else Ronningstam,et al.  Narcissistic personality disorder: Facing DSM-V. , 2009 .

[26]  Denny Borsboom,et al.  Mental Disorders as Causal Systems , 2015 .

[27]  D. Lynam,et al.  Measures of Narcissism and Their Relations to DSM-5 Pathological Traits , 2016, Assessment.

[28]  Claudia D. van Borkulo,et al.  A Network Approach to Psychosis: Pathways Between Childhood Trauma and Psychotic Symptoms , 2017, Schizophrenia bulletin.

[29]  Patrick Danaher,et al.  The joint graphical lasso for inverse covariance estimation across multiple classes , 2011, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B, Statistical methodology.

[30]  R. Krueger,et al.  Understanding Psychopathology , 2006, Current directions in psychological science.

[31]  L. Siever,et al.  Personality disorder types proposed for DSM-5. , 2011, Journal of personality disorders.

[32]  Janet B W Williams,et al.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , 2013 .

[33]  C. Marchesi,et al.  The facets of identity: personality pathology assessment through the Inventory of Personality Organization. , 2015, Personality disorders.

[34]  Kenneth N. Levy,et al.  Initial construction and validation of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory. , 2009, Psychological assessment.

[35]  G. Costantini,et al.  Generalization of Clustering Coefficients to Signed Correlation Networks , 2014, PloS one.

[36]  A. Pincus,et al.  Narcissism at the crossroads: phenotypic description of pathological narcissism across clinical theory, social/personality psychology, and psychiatric diagnosis. , 2008, Clinical psychology review.