Consensual lay profiles of narcissism and their connection to the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory.

Although there is evidence that experts agree on the traits that characterize narcissism, this agreement may be due, in part, to the influence of the operationalizations based on the American Psychiatric Association's series of Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1980, 1994, 2013). Because these trait descriptions are important in shaping conceptualizations and serving as empirical criteria for construct validation, we explored their generalizability. In Study 1, we collected lay ratings (N = 1,792) of prototypical cases of narcissism across 15 different categories (e.g., gender, age, occupational status) on the 30 traits of the five-factor model (FFM). There was good agreement within and across rating categories and the trait profiles were quite similar to existing ratings made by academicians and clinicians. In Study 2 (N = 603), we examined the degree to which various scores from the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory-Short Form (FFNI-SF; Sherman et al., 2015) provided empirical matches to these FFM profiles (mean lay ratings from Study 1; existing expert-based and meta-analytically derived profiles). In general, scores from the FFNI-SF grandiose scale, as well as the empirically derived FFNI-SF Antagonism and Agentic Extraversion components yielded FFM profiles closely aligned to the various consensus profiles. These results are generally consistent with a burgeoning literature that suggests that the FFNI/FFNI-SF is a promising tool for the study of narcissism given its comprehensiveness, flexibility, and ties to the predominant model of personality. (PsycINFO Database Record

Narcissism and United States' culture: The view from home and around the world.

The issue of Americans' levels of narcissism is subject to lively debate. The focus of the present research is on the perception of national character (PNC) of Americans as a group. In Study 1, American adults (N = 100) rated Americans as significantly more narcissistic than they perceived themselves and acquaintances. In Study 2, this finding was replicated with American college students (N = 322). PNC ratings of personality traits and externalizing behaviors revealed that Americans were perceived as disagreeable and antisocial as well. In Study 3, we examined the broader characteristics associated with PNC ratings (N = 183). Americans rated the typical American as average on a variety of characteristics (e.g., wealth, education, health, likability) and PNC ratings of narcissism were largely unrelated to these ratings. In Study 4 (N = 1,202) Americans rated PNCs for different prespecified groups of Americans; as expected, PNC ratings of narcissism differed by gender, age, and occupational status such that American males, younger Americans, and Americans working in high-visibility and status occupations were seen as more narcissistic. In Study 5 (N = 733), citizens of 4 other world regions (Basque Country, China, England, Turkey) rated members of their own region as more narcissistic than they perceived themselves, but the effect sizes were smaller than those found in the case of Americans' perceptions of Americans. Additionally, members of these other regions rated Americans as more narcissistic than members of their own region. Finally, in Study 6, participants from around the world (N = 377) rated Americans as more narcissistic, extraverted, and antagonistic than members of their own countries. We discuss the role that America's position as a global economic and military power, paired with a culture that creates and reifies celebrity figures, may play in leading to perceptions of Americans as considerably narcissistic.