Citation

Thomaes S, Stegge H, Bushman BJ, Olthof T, Denissen J. J. Pers. Assess. 2008; 90(4): 382-391.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, VU University, The Netherlands. s.thomaes@uu.nl

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Society for Personality Assessment, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00223890802108162

PMID

18584447

Abstract

In this article, we describe the development and validation of a short (10 item) but comprehensive self-report measure of childhood narcissism. The Childhood Narcissism Scale (CNS) is a 1-dimensional measure of stable individual differences in childhood narcissism with strong internal consistency reliability (Studies 1-4). The CNS is virtually unrelated to conventional measures of self-esteem but is positively related to self-appraised superiority, social evaluative concern and self-esteem contingency, agentic interpersonal goals, and emotional extremity (Study 5). Furthermore, the CNS is negatively related to empathic concern and positively related to aggression following ego threat (Study 6). These results suggest that childhood narcissism has similar psychological and interpersonal correlates as adult narcissism. The CNS provides researchers a convenient tool for measuring narcissism in children and young adolescents with strong preliminary psychometric characteristics.

Language: en