The Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI)
According to Oxford Dictionaries, the word ‘narcissism’ means “excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance”. The term itself is originated from Greek mythology, where Narcissus, the son of the river god Cephissus and nymph Liriope, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Although we use this word quiet often and casually, narcissism or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is, in fact, a disorder that is serious enough to affect people’s lives significantly.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is part of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM) as an Axis II, Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, or erratic) Disorder. One might think that people who suffer from NPD display “narcissistic” behaviors all the time but that is not the case. Like many other psychological disorders, the characteristics of NPD doesn’t necessarily manifest in the same way. Research literature has indicated that there are subtypes of narcissism and the two well-known types are grandiose and vulnerable narcissism.
Grandiose narcissists tend to be less sensitive compared to vulnerable narcissists. They tend to have very high self-esteem and have no shame. They believe that they are superior and they would go into a vicious rage against those who do not agree with them or do not treat them as they desire. People with grandiose narcissism have much in common with people with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) for being very aggressive and dominance-seeking without empathy or remorse.
Vulnerable narcissists, on the other hand, are more sensitive and tend to swing back and forth between acting superior and feeling hurt. Similar to Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), they tend to be preoccupied with fears of rejection and abandonment. They may feel anxious and depressed when people don’t treat them as they desire.
Self-report questionnaire is the mostly used strategy in order to measure NPD amongst other assessments. Instead of introducing every single assessment that is out there, I am going to talk about the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI).
The Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI) is a 148-item self-report inventory of 15 traits associated with grandiose and vulnerable narcissism from a five-factor model (FFM) perspective (Miller, 2013). According to Miller and his colleagues, FFNI yielded strong convergent and discriminant validity in comparison with existing measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and NPD. Additionally, it also has a good incremental validity, which is a validity that determines whether a new psychometric assessment will provide more information than existing method of assessment. Another strength of FFNI is that both clinical and community samples were included to test its validity.
In his discussion, Miller points out that samples with greater racial and ethnic diversity should be included to test the FFNI because the samples used in this particular study were relatively homogeneous (In sample 1, 85% was Caucasian and 91% was white in sample 2). Moreover, because FFNI is a newly developed design, further data on this test are needed.
