The Role of Pathological Narcissism and Maladaptive Personality Traits.

Introduction.– Aggressive behavior has been linked to both narcissistic personality traits (Lambe et al., 2016) and personality disorders (Howard, 2015). However, there is a lack of study investigating the role of the relationships between pathological narcissism and others maladaptive personality traits in relation to aggression. Objective.– To explore the relationships between pathological narcissism, maladaptive personality traits and aggression among a sample of violent offenders and community participants. Method.– We administered to a sample of violent offenders (n = 70) and a sample of community participants (N= 100) the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ, Buss&Perry, 1992), the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI, Pincus et al., 2009) and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5, American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Results.– As expected,wefound that violent offenders scored higher on the PNI and specific subscales of the PID-5 compared to community participants. Moreover, AQ scores correlated positively and significantly with maladaptive personality traits and with pathological pathological narcissism. Finally, among our sample of violent offenders, we observed specific and significant associations between pathological narcissism and some subscales of the PID-5. Conclusions.– Our results suggest that pathological narcissism and specific maladaptive personality traits play an important role in relation to aggression. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.