Vulnerable narcissism and the dark factor of personality: Insights from a cross-validated item-level and scale-level factor-analytic approach

Research on socially aversive personality traits has increasingly been concerned with establishing common elements between these constructs and recently has introduced the dark factor of personality (D). However, investigations into D have not yet considered the role of vulnerable narcissism. Drawing on a discovery-replication sample approach with two large samples (total N > 2400), we present two studies on the relation of vulnerable narcissism with D. Study 1 investigated the factorial structure of popular measures of Dark Triad Traits exploratorily, while Study 2 tested the obtained structures with confirmatory factor analysis and fitted a D-factor model on the data. We show that the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale is not a unidimensional measure, but is better represented by two weakly correlated factors, sensitivity towards judgment and egocentricity. Only egocentricity had a salient loading on D, which suggests that egocentricity, but not sensitivity towards judgment, should be considered a dark trait. We discuss the implications of these findings for organizational and industrial psychology, particularly with regards to leadership narcissism and possible clinical-subclinical differences in vulnerable narcissism, especially concerning the relationship of egocentricity and D.