Narcissism assessment in social–personality research: Does the association between narcissism and psychological health result from a confound with self-esteem?

Influential social and personality psychology research indicates that narcissism is related to psychological health. Such inferences are open to question, however, because they nearly all rely on the same self-report instrument—the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin and Hall, 1979 and Raskin and Hall, 1981)—to operationalize and measure narcissism. This is problematic because numerous NPI items do not appear to correspond to common definitions or manifestations of narcissism, and may instead be indicative of self-esteem. Two studies demonstrate that the NPI’s confound with self-esteem accounts for the purported relationship between narcissism and psychological health. This suggests that inferences about narcissism and psychological health may need to be reinterpreted. Results also highlight the need for measures that correspond more directly to core components of narcissism.