Abstract
Malignant narcissism describes a personality disorder that encompasses five core components: narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, paranoia, and aggressiveness. Despite the extensive theoretical and clinical literature on malignant narcissism and its recent momentum in the popular discourse, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the syndrome. The objective of the current research is to document the associations between malignant narcissism, the Dark Tetrad (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism), and paranoia using a scoring procedure for malignant narcissism based on Personality Inventory for DSM-5 facets. A comparative approach was followed, using two types of relative importance analyses—general dominance analysis and relative weight analysis—to determine the nature of the core psychopathological features of malignant narcissism. The French-Canadian version of the Revised Green et al., Paranoid Thoughts Scale was used and had to be validated prior to relative importance analyses, and showed strong psychometric properties. Results from a nonclinical sample (N = 1151) globally indicate that malignant narcissism is more strongly associated with Machiavellianism and psychopathy, followed by narcissism, and then by sadism and ideas of reference, confirming that malignant narcissism is mainly an antagonistic psychopathology. The conceptual and clinical implications of this finding are discussed.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available based on the terms on which the study was approved by the ethics committee that authorized the study. The data could be shared upon reasonable request and contingent upon the approval of an amendment by the ethics committee. Requests to access the data should be directed to jonathan.faucher@uqtr.ca.
Notes
The number of participants varied from one analysis to the other because of missing data for some measures.
A total of eight participants did not report their gender identity.
Distributions for both the R-GPTS Ideas of Reference and R-GPTS Ideas of Persecution were found to be nonnormal based on visual indices as well as Kolomogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk tests.
For example, to compare Machiavellianism and psychopathy, the R2 proper to Machiavellianism in a model including Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism could be compared with the R2 proper to psychopathy in a model including psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism.
The first figure denotes the correlation with R-GPTS Ideas of Reference; the second figure denotes the correlation with R-GPTS Ideas of Persecution.
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Funding
The research leading to these results was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) under a Doctoral Research Scholarship (No. 272285) awarded to Jonathan Faucher.
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Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by both authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jonathan Faucher, and Dominick Gamache commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Faucher, J., Gamache, D. Malignant Narcissism, the Dark Tetrad, and Paranoia: A Comparative Study Using Relative Importance Analyses. J Psychopathol Behav Assess (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-024-10147-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-024-10147-y