Adolescent narcissism and its association with different indices of prosocial behavior

• Examined dimensions of adolescent narcissism and prosocial behavior.
• Non-pathological and grandiose narcissism was related to prosocial behavior.
• Results imply some degree of self-serving motives for prosocial behavior.

This study sought to replicate previous findings that adolescent pathological narcissism is linked to self-reported prosocial behavior (Kauten & Barry, 2014) and further investigated the relation of self-reported narcissism with self-, parent- and peer-reported prosocial behavior, as well as prosocial intentions, in 155 at-risk adolescents (M age = 16.8 years, SD = .77; 127 males, 28 females). Non-pathological narcissism demonstrated a positive relation with parent-reported prosocial behavior, and grandiose narcissism was positively related to both self- and parent-reported prosocial behavior. Vulnerable narcissism did not demonstrate a significant relation with any variant of prosocial behavior. Thus, the relation between adolescent narcissism and prosocial behavior appears to vary based on the dimension of narcissism and the method of assessing prosocial behavior.