Just One Question Can Identify Who’s the Narcissist, Researchers Say

Lisa Franchi August 07, 2014

Researchers from Ohio State University have developed a new method that can identify which people are narcissistic. And such method only involves a single question.

In a series of 11 experiments involving more than 2,200 people of all ages, the researchers found they could reliably identify narcissistic people by asking them this exact question (including the note): To what extent do you agree with this statement: “I am a narcissist.” Participants rated themselves on a scale of one (not very true of me) to seven (very true of me).

Results showed that people’s answer to this question lined up very closely with several other validated measures of narcissism, including the widely used Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI).

The difference is that this new survey — which the researchers call the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS) — has one question, while the NPI has 40 questions to answer.

“People who are willing to admit they are more narcissistic than others probably actually are more narcissistic,” said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

“People who are narcissists are almost proud of the fact. You can ask them directly because they don’t see narcissism as a negative quality — they believe they are superior to other people and are fine with saying that publicly.”

“Understanding narcissism has many implications for society that extend beyond the impact on the individual narcissist’s life,” said co-author Sara Konrath of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

“For example, narcissistic people have low empathy, and empathy is one key motivator of philanthropic behaviour such as donating money or time to organizations.”

“Overall, narcissism is problematic for both individuals and society. Those who think they are already great don’t try to improve themselves,” Bushman said.

“And narcissism is bad for society because people who are only thinking of themselves and their own interests are less helpful to others.”

Bushman argued that the one question tool (SINS) shouldn’t be seen a replacement for the longer narcissism questionnaires (NPI, etc.) as other instruments can provide more information to researchers, such as which form of narcissism someone has.

“But our single-item scale can be useful for long surveys in which researchers are concerned about people getting fatigued or distracted while answering questions and possibly even dropping out before they are done,” Bushman said. He noted that if it takes a person 20 seconds to answer the single question in the SINS measure, it would take him or her 13.3 minutes to answer the 40-question NPI.

“The advantage of SINS compared to other measures,” Bushman said, “is that it allows researchers to identify narcissists very easily.”

“We don’t think SINS is a replacement for other narcissism inventories in all situations, but it has a time and place,” he said.

Their study was published in the journal Plos One.

Source of this article: It Takes Just One Question to Identify Narcissism