A new measure of hypersensitive narcissism was derived by correlating the items of H. A. Murray’s (1938) Narcism Scale with an MMPI-based composite measure of covert narcissism. In three samples of college students (total N 5 403), 10 items formed a reliable measure: the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS). The new HSNS and the MMPI-based composite showed similar patterns of correlations wit...

The association between narcissism and aggression has been empirically supported in adults and adolescents, but it is unclear whether narcissism might also be related to prosocial behavior. The present study investigated this issue using selfand peer-informants. Participants were 183 adolescents ages 16–19 (159 males, 24 females; 64.5% Caucasian). Of these participants, 126 (104 males, 22 femal...

Across four studies, narcissists were more angry and aggressive after experiencing a social rejection than were nonnarcissists. In Study 1, narcissism was positively correlated with feelings of anger and negatively correlated with more internalized negative emotions in a self-reported, past episode of social rejection. Study 2 replicated this effect for a concurrent lab manipulation of social r...

With the syndrome of malignant narcissism, which is characterised by narcissistic personality disorder, anti-social behaviour, sadism and a marked tendency to paranoid reactions, Kernberg (1985, 1996) describes an independent form of pathological narcissism. According to Stone (1996) this is found in many mass-murderers and serial killers. On the basis of the example of Jack Unterweger the conn...

Theoretical models suggest narcissists’ grandiose but fragile self-concept leads them to impose perfectionistic demands onto others and to promote an image of perfection in pursuit of others’ admiration. It is unclear which perfectionism dimensions are uniquely related to narcissism and if the relationship between perfectionism and narcissism generalizes across men and women. The present study ...

Narcissistic personality disorder is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature. Yet, the validity of this diagnostic category remains questionable. This is owed, in large part, to the relative absence of empirical work that has examined narcissism in clinical samples. Descriptions and findings from studies involving non-clinical samples suggest that narcissism is associated with con...