Narcissism has received increased attention in the past few decades as a sub-clinical individual
difference with important everyday consequences, such as self-enhancement in perceptions
of one’s own behavior and attributes. The most widespread measure used by non-clinical
researchers, the 40-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory or NPI-40, captures a range of
different facets of the construct but its length may prohibit its use in settings where time pressure
and respondent fatigue are major concerns. In this article, we draw from the NPI-40 set of
items to create and validate a shorter, unidimensional measure, the NPI-16. In Wve studies, we
show that this short NPI closely parallels the NPI-40 in its relation to other personality measures
and dependent variables. We conclude that the NPI-16 has notable face, internal, discriminant,
and predictive validity and that it can serve as an alternative measure of narcissism
when situations do not allow the use of lo