Validity and reliability of the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale in China

Background: Wink distinguishes between explicit and implicit narcissism, the latter being hypersensitive narcissism, which manifests itself as outward humility and inhibition masking an underlying pompous outlook and sense of entitlement. Early measures of hypersensitive narcissism used Murray's Narcissism Scale, which was explored by measuring the narcissism levels of Harvard undergraduates. Hendin and Cheek subsequently developed the Hypersensitive Sensitive Narcissism Scale based on this narcissism scale. In addition to this, there are few ways to measure vulnerability-sensitive narcissism, and Chinese measurement tools on narcissism mainly measure explicit narcissism, neglecting to accurately measure vulnerability-sensitive narcissism, and failing to completely respond to an individual's implicit narcissistic traits. Aim: The hypersensitive narcissism scale was applied to college students to explore the factor structure of the scale under the background of Chinese culture, and to test its reliability and validity. Methods 1000 questionnaires were distributed to college students, and 912 valid questionnaires were collected. Self-Esteem Scale, Aggression Scale and Narcissism subscale of Dark Triad Scale were used as the criterion. After 3 weeks, 100 college students were randomly selected for retest. Results: The exploratory factor analysis showed that one dimension should be extracted. Eigenvalue was 5.352 and 53.518% cumulative variance interpretation rate. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale structure validity was good. Internal consistency reliability of the scale was 0.785; The test-retest reliability was 0.833, and the criterion correlation validity reached a significant level. Conclusion: The Chinese version of hypersensitive narcissism scale has good reliability and validity, which can effectively measure hypersensitive narcissism. The localisation of the scale can better serve the research and development of the university student population on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can help the research in this field to have a more in-depth development in China.