Lauren Wilson

Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism and the DSM–5 Pathological Personality Trait Model

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Personality Disorders (4th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 2000) personality disorders (PDs) that will be included in the DSM–5 will be diagnosed in an entirely different manner; the explicit criterion sets will be replaced with impairments in self and interpersonal functioning and personality traits from a 25-trait dimensional model of personality pathology. From a trait perspective, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the focus of this study, is assessed using 2 specific traits: grandiosity and attention seeking. Using a sample collected online from Amazons Mechanical Turk (MTurk; N = 306), we examined the relations among traits from a new measure of DSM–5s trait model—the Personality Inventory for DSM–5 (PID5; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, in press)—and grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. The 25 traits from PID5 captured a significant portion of the variance in grandiose and vulnerable factors, although the 2 specific facets designated for the assessment of NPD fared substantially better in the assessment of grandiose rather than vulnerable narcissism. These results are discussed in the context of improving the DSM–5s ability to capture both narcissism dimensions.

The Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI): a test of the convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of FFNI scores in clinical and community samples.

The five-factor narcissism inventory (FFNI) is a new self-report measure that was developed to assess traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), as well as grandiose and vulnerable narcissism from a five-factor model (FFM) perspective. In the current study, the FFNI was examined in relation to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) NPD, DSM-5 (http://www.dsm5.org) NPD traits, grandiose narcissism, and vulnerable narcissism in both community (N = 287) and clinical samples (N = 98). Across the samples, the FFNI scales manifested good convergent and discriminant validity such that FFNI scales derived from FFM neuroticism were primarily related to vulnerable narcissism scores, scales derived from FFM extraversion were primarily related to grandiose scores, and FFNI scales derived from FFM agreeableness were related to both narcissism dimensions, as well as the DSM-IV and DSM-5 NPD scores. The FFNI grandiose and vulnerable narcissism composites also demonstrated incremental validity in the statistical prediction of these scores, above and beyond existing measures of DSM NPD, grandiose narcissism, and vulnerable narcissism, respectively. The FFNI is a promising measure that provides a comprehensive assessment of narcissistic pathology while maintaining ties to the significant general personality literature on the FFM.