Assessing Malignant Narcissism and its Associations with Dark Triad Dimensions, Social Deviance, Personality Disorders, Self-Harming Behaviors, Aggression, and Personality Functioning: A Study Among Community-Dwelling Participants and Psychotherapy Participants

Abstract

Background: Dimensional conceptualization of personality pathology may be useful to describe and understand the nature of different manifestations of personality pathology, including malignant narcissism. Recently, a sound scoring procedure for malignant narcissism (i.e., MNARC index) based on the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 trait scores was proposed. The present study aimed at providing further evidence of the reliability and validity of the MNARC index in a sample of community-dwelling adults and in a sample of psychotherapy adult participants. Methods: Community-dwelling participants (N = 288; 59.4% female; mean age = 32.69 years), and psychotherapy participants (N = 168; 58.3% female; mean age = 34.52 years), were administered the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 and Five Factor Narcissism Inventory-Short Form. Moreover, community-dwelling adults completed the Machiavellianism Inventory-Version IV, Triarchic Psychopathy Measure, and Self-Report of Delinquency Scale; rather, clinical participants were administered the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Personality Disorders, Clinician-Administered Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Disorder Index, Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, Aggression Questionnaire, and Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders Module I. Results: The MNARC index showed adequate reliability in both samples, and MNARC index mean score significantly discriminated clinical participants from non-clinical participants; moreover, according to exploratory graph analysis, the 11 PID-5 scale weighted scores shaped a highly coherent personality profile. In the community sample MNARC index was significantly closer to grandiose narcissism than to vulnerable narcissism, as well as to Machiavellianism and even psychopathy. In multiple regression analysis, MNARC index, showed unique, positive, significant and non-negligible contribution to explaining the variation in all social deviance dimensions. Among psychotherapy participants, exploratory graph analysis findings suggested that MNARC index clustered together with histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder symptom counts, as well as narcissistic grandiosity. Notably, we observed positive and significant associations between MNARC index, and physical aggression, impairment in personality functioning, and self-harming behaviors, respectively. Conclusions: Confirming and extending previous data on the MNARC index, our findings supported the reliability and validity of the MNARC index. Our results expanded our empirical knowledge of malignant narcissism, while providing additional support to the possibility to rely on the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 for assessing constructs grounded in different theoretical perspectives. Although our findings should be considered in the light of several limitations (e.g., non-random nature of our sampling strategy; cross-sectional data), our results may be useful in improving our knowledge of narcissistic features among community and clinical participants.

Keywords

• alternative model of personality disorders
• personality inventory for dsm-5
• grandiose narcissism
• malignant narcissism
• self-destructive behavior
• vulnerable narcissism.