mindhits

Narcissism Test

Nine published items measuring grandiosity, entitlement and the need for admiration — as a personality trait, not a diagnosis.

Start the test

9 narcissism items inside the 27-item Short Dark Triad, about 7 minutes|Published scoring key from Jones & Paulhus (2014), not invented

Authors: Jones, D. N. & Paulhus, D. L. (2014), Assessment, 21(1), 28-41

Licence: Published in the article appendix and distributed by the authors for research use. Confirm with the authors for commercial use.

What the narcissism scale measures

A high score

You believe you belong at the front, you are comfortable saying so, and recognition matters to you more than you would usually admit. You are probably better in a room than you are in a queue.

What it gives you

  • Confidence that gets you into rooms other people wait to be invited to
  • Visible self-belief, which groups often read as competence
  • Resilience to criticism that would stop other people

What to watch for

  • Feedback bouncing off, including the parts that were right
  • Over-claiming on shared work
  • Admiration becoming a requirement rather than a pleasure

A low score

You do not claim much for yourself and attention is not something you seek. Compliments may be mildly uncomfortable.

What it gives you

  • Credit shared accurately, which teams notice
  • Accurate self-assessment rather than an inflated one
  • Being easy to be around over long periods

What to watch for

  • Under-selling work that deserved to be seen
  • Deferring to louder people who know less
  • Reading your own competence as ordinary

Why 27 questions, not 9

The nine narcissism items are part of the Short Dark Triad, a 27-item instrument whose authors specify that the items be presented in their published order with the subscale headings removed. Lifting nine of them out would be a different administration from the one the scale was validated under.

There is a practical reason as well. The nine items sit together, and read in isolation they are transparently about grandiosity: “I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so.” is not hard to see through. Surrounded by eighteen items about other things, the construct is at least less obvious. This is a scale anyone can game if they want to; there is no reason to make it easier.

So you answer 27 and get three scores. The narcissism score is the one you came for, and the other two are the traits it is normally reported alongside.

How it is scored

Nine items on a five-point agreement scale, three of them reverse-keyed and flipped before summing. The raw narcissism score runs from 9 to 45, and the bar on your result shows where you sit inside that range rather than a percentile against a norm group.

Scoring runs in your browser from your own answers. It is deterministic, so the same answers always produce the same result, and no part of it is generated, estimated or inferred.

Narcissism as psychologists measure it

In everyday use “narcissist” is an insult. In personality research it is a dimension, and everyone has a position on it. The trait version covers grandiosity, entitlement and the need for admiration, and it is measured across the normal population rather than in a clinic.

Subclinical narcissism predicts emerging as a leader more reliably than it predicts being an effective one. Those are different outcomes and the research separates them clearly.

It is one of the three traits in the Dark Triad, grouped with Machiavellianism and subclinical psychopathy because the three keep turning up together — correlated, but not enough to be one thing, which is the finding that made the grouping worth studying.

What this cannot tell you

It cannot diagnose narcissistic personality disorder, or any other disorder, and a high score is not evidence of one.

It cannot tell you whether somebody else is a narcissist. Self-report measures the person answering, and answering on behalf of a partner, parent or colleague produces a number about nobody.

Nine items is a short scale. Read the score as a position on a dimension, not a measurement with decimal places.

This is a self-assessment questionnaire, not a diagnostic instrument and not medical advice.

Take the narcissism test now

27 statements, about seven minutes, nine of them scoring narcissism. Your answers are scored on this device and stored on this device. There is no account to create and nothing is sent to a server.

Start the test

No sign up, ever. Every item comes from the appendix of Short Dark Triad (SD3), 27 items, and this page tells you how the score is worked out before you answer anything.

Narcissism test: frequently asked questions

Is this a test for narcissistic personality disorder?

No. This measures subclinical narcissism, which is a normal-range personality trait that everybody has some amount of. Narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis made by a qualified professional using a clinical interview and a person's history. A questionnaire cannot make it, rule it out, or come close. If that is the question you are actually asking, the answer is to speak to a clinician.

Why does the test ask 27 questions when only 9 are about narcissism?

Because that is how the instrument was validated. The Short Dark Triad measures three traits, and its authors specify that the items be presented in their published order. Nine narcissism items on their own would also be transparently about grandiosity, which makes an already gameable scale easier to game. You get the narcissism score you came for, plus the two traits it is normally reported alongside.

What does the narcissism subscale actually measure?

Grandiosity, entitlement and the need for admiration: believing you belong at the front, being comfortable saying so, and caring about recognition. Three of the nine items are reverse-keyed, so agreeing with everything will not produce a high score.

Can I cheat on a narcissism test?

Easily, in either direction. The items say what they mean, and anybody who wants a particular result can produce one. That is a known limit of self-report for traits like this, and it is why the original validation study collected informant ratings alongside the self-reports.

Does a high narcissism score mean I am a bad person?

No. Subclinical narcissism predicts emerging as a leader more reliably than it predicts being an effective one, and it carries real advantages: confidence that opens doors, visible self-belief that groups read as competence, resilience to criticism. It also carries costs. The result page gives you both sides for whichever end of the scale you land on.

Is the narcissism test free?

Yes, and there is no account. The nine items come from the appendix of the authors' published paper, the scoring key is printed on the result, and nothing is sold on this test: the Short Dark Triad's licence covers research use, so no paid report is offered for it.

Where these questions come from

All 27 items, their order and the five reverse-keyed items were read from the appendix of the authors' own published paper, along with the instruction to remove the subscale headings before administration. Check the source.

Related assessments