The Narcissist Test

Every result, explained

The Narcissist Test reads the NPI-40 through the three factors Ackerman et al. found in 2011: Leadership/Authority, Grandiose Exhibitionism and Entitlement/Exploitativeness. Which of them sit above their own line decides the profile.

• The Functional Self

  No factor stands out against the norm.

  None of the three factors sits above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample: leadership, display and the cost factor are all inside the ordinary range or under it. Read your total on its own line above; if it sits high while no factor does, the height came from the fifteen items that load on none of the three, and the field has no reading for those. What this result does not say is that you are not narcissistic. The NPI sees grandiose narcissism only. A low score here is low on grandiose narcissism as the NPI measures it, and it says nothing about the hypersensitive kind.

• The Sovereign

  Leadership high, the cost factor not. The agentic configuration.

  Your Leadership/Authority factor sits above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample and your Entitlement/Exploitativeness factor does not. That is the split Ackerman and colleagues found when they asked what the NPI really measures: the leadership items travel with self-esteem, extraversion and lower social anxiety, while the entitlement items travel with exploitation and impulsivity. You scored on the first and not the second. Most of what the total is calling narcissism here is agency.

• The Charmer

  The cost factor high, leadership not. The extractive configuration.

  Your Entitlement/Exploitativeness factor sits above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample and your Leadership/Authority factor does not. Three or four of the four items: manipulating people, insisting on the respect due to you, expecting a great deal, never satisfied until you get what you deserve. Those four are the part of the NPI that tracked exploitation and impulsivity in the 2011 study and nothing adaptive, and they are lit without the confidence factor underneath them. The supply has to come from other people because the internal supply is not there.

• The Performer

  Display high, leadership and the cost factor not.

  Your Grandiose Exhibitionism factor sits above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample while Leadership/Authority and Entitlement/Exploitativeness both stay under it. Seven or more of the ten display items: the centre of attention, showing off, the mirror, the body, being noticed in public. In the 2011 study this factor tracked impulsivity rather than self-esteem, and it did not carry the exploitation the entitlement items do. What you have is appetite for the room's eyes, without the authority to run the room or the entitlement to bill it.

• The Full Pattern

  Leadership and the cost factor, both high.

  Both Leadership/Authority and Entitlement/Exploitativeness sit above the +1 SD line for the 2011 college sample, whatever the display factor did. This is the configuration the total was built to find: the agency that runs rooms and the entitlement that bills them, in the same person. It places you in the top band on the two factors that matter most, a share the norms cannot put a precise number on. The instrument cannot diagnose anything; it does not measure Narcissistic Personality Disorder and no self-report can. What it can say is that the adaptive and the maladaptive halves of grandiose narcissism are both present, and that is the right signal for a proper assessment with someone who does this for a living.

Nothing on these pages is a diagnosis. A result describes a pattern of answers on a self-report instrument; only a clinician can diagnose, and only with a proper assessment.