Narcissism and depression: MMPI-2 evidence for the continuum hypothesis in clinical samples

According to one hypothesis, self-report measures of narcissism help describe a psychological continuum related to self-esteem. Most of the previous support for this idea appeared in studies of undergraduates responding to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1981) along with other self-report instruments. In this project, results consistent with the continuum hypothesis were obtained when Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) narcissism scales were correlated with depression in adults receiving treatment for alcoholism. Essentially identical outcomes emerged in a second sample of state psychiatric hospital patients. A third study upheld the hypothesis when narcissism scales were correlated with clinical assessments rather than self-reports of depression. None of these findings were easily explained in terms of alternative interpretations of self-reported narcissism, and these data demonstrate that empirical support for the continuum hypothesis was not limited to the NPI, undergraduates, or self-report measures.