The Narcissistic Personality Inventory 8: Validation of a Brief Measure of Narcissistic Personality

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the aim of constructing and validating a short form of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The NPI is the most widely-applied measure for the assessment of narcissistic personality traits and, therefore, it is of great relevance for many research questions in personality and social psychology. To develop the short scale, we first found the optimal eight-item solution among all valid combinations of the NPI-15 items in an exploratory subsample (n = 1,165) of our complete representative sample of the German general population. We then validated this model in a confirmatory subsample (n = 1,126). Additionally, we examined its invariance across age groups and sex, as well as its reliability, as well as construct and predictive validity —comparing it to the NPI-15. Our results indicate that the NPI-8 is a valid and reliable measure of narcissistic personality with minimal losses compared to the 15-item version. Particularly where brevity and an economical assessment are desired, the NPI-8 should be considered.

Keywords

• narcissism
• personality trait
• assessment
• short scale
• norm values